Vestnik Kavkaza: Trans Adriatic Pipeline will accept any gas

The Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), one of the two contenders for the final route of the "Southern Gas Corridor" by which Azerbaijani gas will be delivered to Europe, today issued a statement informing about its opportunities and the intention to bring gas to Europe from all available sources.

"TAP is a scalable pipeline project, which will allow transporting additional volumes of gas from the Caspian region and other sources to Europe. This contributes to further ensuring the security and diversification of energy supply," Trend quotes the words of the lead TAP official representative.

Such a statement was generated by leaked information that the European Union is thinking about purchasing gas from Israel, which has recently opened a large deposit "Leviathan." Israeli gas will allow the European Union to further diversify the channels of ensuring its energy security, for which it now primarily strives, trying not to allow the Russian company "Gazprom" to become a virtual monopoly on the European gas market.

In this case, the connection of Israel to the TAP project will enable the country to connect directly to European pipelines, without building costly liquefied natural gas terminals.

Note that Kjetil Tungland, the company head, stated even before these rumors that TAP is ready to offer transportation of gas to everyone who is "ready to take on the obligations to supply gas for TAP."

The TAP route runs from the border with Turkey (where the first "step" of "Southern Gas Corridor," TANAP, ends) through Greece, Albania, the Adriatic Sea to southern Italy and then to Western Europe. The initial capacity of the pipeline will be 10 billion cubic meters per year, expandable to 20 billion cubic meters a year. TAP's shareholders are the Swiss company AXPO (42,5%), Norway's Statoil (42,5%) and Germany's E.ON Ruhrgas (15%).

Source: Vestnik Kavkaza