Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. March 1 / Trend /
It is the Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy (ITGI) that is the priority project Italy will support as part of the EU's strategy to diversify and raise the security of its energy supplies, ADPnews reported according to Italian deputy industry minister Stefano Saglia.
"The Italian government has not changed its idea on the support for South Stream, planned by Italy's oil and gas major Eni SpA and Russia's Gazprom", Saglia told reporters in Brussels at the end of the EU energy council.
ITGI can be made soon, since it runs on existing infrastructure, Saglia said.
Moreover, ITGI has a capacity of 10 billion cu m, compared with 16 billion cu m which nowAzerbaijan can provide, of which 6 billion cu m are already booked by Turkey, Saglia said.
"For now we'll build ITGI, then we'll see if it can be possibly integrated with South Stream or with Nabucco. Not that we have changed our mind, but ITGI is more feasible today," Saglia said.
ITGI gas pipeline (Turkey-Greece-Italy) involves gas supplies from the Caspian region and the Middle East to the EU countries.
It includes updated Turkish pipeline infrastructure and also ITG projects such as the Turkey-Greece junction pipeline and IGI.
IGI Poseidon SA was created by the Italian company Edison and Greek company Depa for the design and construction of the pipeline Greece-Italy, known as Poseidon.
ITGI project may enter the operational stage in 2015. Its construction will begin in 2012.
The South Stream project is being implemented to diversify the supply routes of natural gas to European consumers. It involves the construction of a gas pipeline through the Black Sea to the South and Central Europe. Presumably, the capacity of the project will be accelerated gradually. The total design capacity of the offshore section of South Stream will reach 63 billion cubic meters a year. According to the estimations, the project is worth 25 billion euro.