The European Gas Conference in Vienna has been discussing the Southern Gas Corridor and its key elements. The two topics focused on at the conference were titled “Developments of the Southern Gas Corridor” and “TAP and TANAP: Getting ready to receive gas”.
Those attending the event, hosted by OMV, included European Commission delegates and officials, as well as representatives from TAP, Gazprom, Eni, Uniper, BP, Total, SOCAR, Fluxys and Equinor.
Luca Schieppati, Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) Executive Director, said that over 84% of the Trans-Adriatic pipeline, including procurement, engineering and construction has been implemented.
European Gas Conference Vienna 2019
Luca Schieppati speaks at the European Gas Conference in 2019
Speaking at the event, TAP Executive Director Luca Schieppati emphasized that more than 84 percent of Trans Adriatic gas pipeline project (TAP), including engineering, procurement and construction, has been implemented to transport natural gas to Europe.
He added that 97% of the Greek and Albanian TAP pipes have already been defined. Italy is continuing construction of the micro-tunnel and terminal.
Schieppati also noted that the project financing of €3.9 billion was now complete, allowing for construction to be completed ready for the project’s start in 2020.
The Southern Gas Corridor will transport gas from the Shah Deniz gas condensate field project in the Azerbaijani region of the Caspian Sea to Turkey and on into Europe.
In total the corridor consists of four projects which will interlink: Shah Deniz 2, Expansion of South Caucasus Pipeline (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum), the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) and Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP). Overall, the projects have a combined estimated investment cost of around €35 billion.
The EU sees TAP as one of their strategic objectives in energy security and diversification. The route was chosen as it is one of the shortest and most direct routes to move natural gas from Azerbaijan to Europe. The initial capacity of the pipeline is estimated to be 10 billion m³ of gas per year with the possibility of doubling it. It will be the first non-Russian gas pipeline to serve Europe since the Medgaz link, from Algeria to Spain, opened in 2011.
Funding for the project came from loans approved by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), as well as financing from export credit agencies and a consortium of 17 banks including Bank of China, BNP Paribas, Societe Generale and UniCredit.
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