TAP Open to Greek and Italian Partners

The Trans-Adriatic Pipeline consortium would be open to partnership from Italy and Greece, according to Rikard Scoufias, TAP's country manager for Greece.

Speaking to Bloomberg in Athens yesterday, Mr. Scoufias said that the consortium would welcome participation from those two countries given TAP's presence in both.

"We’re open to discussing new partnerships at a shareholder level and looking at our host countries, we’d welcome a Greek and/or Italian partner," he said.

He also said that a decision by the BP-led Shah Deniz consortium to choose TAP over rival ITGI (Interconnector-Turkey-Greece-Italy) was decided and final.

"The Shah Deniz consortium is the decision maker, they’ve made a decision and they’ve continuously emphasized that it’s unanimous and final," he said.

In February of this year, ITGI officially lost out to the Trans-Adriatic pipeline in the race to become the transit route for gas transported from the second phase of the Shah Deniz field in Azerbaijan.

Following the announcement, reports attributed to unidentified individuals in the Greek Energy Ministry stated that Depa SA, the Greek state-controlled natural gas supplier and ITGI consortium partner, was reported to be interested in buying a stake of as much as 15 percent in TAP.

Despite rival ITGI being out of the running, TAP is still at risk of losing out in the decision for which pipeline will transport gas from the Shah Deniz field, with a new variation of the Nabucco Pipeline - Nabucco West - and South East Europe Pipeline (SEEP) also still in the running for the decision.