EIB Puts Off €1.5bn TAP Decision until 2018
The European Investment Bank (EIB) deferred a decision at its December 12 board meeting on whether to lend €1.5bn to the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).
It’s the second Southern Gas Corridor project, linked to Azeri gas imports, on which the bank kicked the can down the road on any funding decision, the other being Tanap.
An industry source told NGW December 13 that the loan had not been rejected, but rather “the [EIB] simply ran out of time… and the decision to loan to TAP will now be moved to the next board meeting, which takes place February 2018.” There was no immediate comment from the EIB itself.
Bankwatch, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), however said late December 12 that EIB, for now, had postponed lending €1.5bn to TAP. It described the Southern Gas Corridor including TAP as “a climate-busting fossil fuel project that serves to prop-up corrupt regimes that trample over human-rights” and claimed it would compromise rather than strengthen European energy security. It added: "On a day in which the World Bank pledged to end funding for oil and gas exploration and gas extraction projects, the EIB board seemed to recognise the myriad problems with the TAP project and decided it needs further discussion before deciding on such a large, controversial loan."
EIB had been expected to take a decision on a €1bn or more loan to the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (Tanap) – another key component of the Southern Gas Corridor – by November but that was not even on the EIB board’s agenda for December 12. NGW reported December 11 that Germany and others were uncomfortable with financing Tanap with taxpayer money.
As Bankwatch points out, 30 major international financial institutions - at the One Planet Summit hosted by French president Emmanuel Macron in Paris – agreed December 12 they would put “in place more explicit policies to significantly reduce reliance on fossil fuels and rapidly accelerate financing for renewables.” They included both the EIB, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) which two months ago approved a $500mn loan to Tanap.
Anna Roggenbuck, EIB Policy Officer with Bankwatch, said: "Acknowledging the impacts the [TAP] project would have on both the climate and impacted communities, the EIB board decided it needs more discussion. We expect the board to demand the bank responds meaningfully to all the complaints raised so far by affected communities along the pipeline route." Tim Ratcliffe of the NGO 350.org cited how villagers in Melendugno in southeast Italy had been opposing TAP’s construction “in the face of fascist-era laws” and described the deferred vote as “a massive blow to this dangerous new pipeline.”