Papakonstantinou: Important Decisions on ITGI Will Be Made In Next Three Months

Greek Minister for Environment, Energy and Climate Change Yiorgos Papakonstantinou has said that important decisions on the ITGI pipeline must be made in the next three months. 

The minister was speaking at the third Black Sea Energy and Economic Forum.

Papakonstantinou said that Greece still backed the Interconnector-Turkey-Greece-Italy (ITGI) pipeline and was still confident that the project would go ahead, but said that decisions would need to made within the next three months. He said that the final decisions in the project would ultimately lie with the consortium controlling the project.

The ITGI project could hold a capacity of up to 24 billion cubic metres a year, the chief executive for Greek supply company DEPA (Dimosia Epichirisi Paroxis Aeriou or Public Corporation for Gas Supply) said last month.

"The ITGI system's capacity can be increased from 10 to 24 billion cubic meters for a relatively small incremental investment," Harry Sachinis said.

Bulgarian Energy Minister Traicho Traikov also told Minister Papakonstantinou during the conference that Bulgaria still supported a proposed Greek-Bulgarian gas pipeline, which would help to further the development of the ITGI project.