Baku, Azerbaijan, May 27
By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:
The Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) is one of the landmarks of Macedonia in the issue of new sources of gas supply, Prime Minister of Macedonia Nikola Gruevski said May 27 in an interview with Press24 portal.
He said that Macedonia will need new additional gas supplies in order to ensure long-term energy security and the construction of new gas turbine power plants.
"We focus on three sources in this issue," said Gruevski. "Two of them involve the construction of a gas pipeline from Greece, where it will be connected to the port of Athens, which has supplies of liquefied natural gas, and the TAP pipeline, which will be built to supply gas from Azerbaijan. One more source is joining the Interconnector that connects Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey."
TAP is meant to transport gas from the Caspian region via Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea to southern Italy and further to Western Europe. The pipeline's total length is about 870 kilometers.
The construction of the pipeline is expected to start in 2016. TAP's initial capacity will be 10 billion cubic meters per year, expandable to 20 billion cubic meters per year.
TAP's shareholders are: BP (20 percent), SOCAR (20 percent), Statoil (20 percent), Fluxys (19 percent), Enagas (16 percent), and Axpo (5 percent).
Edited by CN
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