Baku, Azerbaijan, July 21
By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:
Hotels in Rhodope regional unit in the north-eastern part of Greece are given a breath of life thanks to the construction of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), Greek media outlets reported.
Hundreds of workers involved in the construction of the pipeline stay in the hotels of city of Komotini in Rhodope. The occupancy of the hotels here reaches almost 100 percent.
"The number of customers has increased due to TAP," Giannis Papanastasiou, a hotelier in Komotini said, adding that the majority of them are TAP employees from Greece and abroad, i.e. India, Portugal, Spanish and other countries.
Meanwhile the number of tourists in the city remained at the level of last year, according to Papanastasiou. These are mainly Turks coming from Germany. Majority of the thousands of tourists passing through the customs through Greek-Bulgarian border are destined for Greek islands and just few of them stay in Rhodope.
TAP is a part of the Southern Gas Corridor, which is one of the priority energy projects for the European Union. The project envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz Stage 2 to the EU countries.
The pipeline will connect to the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) on the Turkish-Greek border, run through Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea, before coming ashore in Italy’s south.
TAP will be 878 kilometers in length (Greece 550 kilometers, Albania 215 kilometers, Adriatic Sea 105 kilometers, and Italy 8 kilometers).
TAP’s shareholding is comprised of BP (20 percent), SOCAR (20 percent), Snam S.p.A. (20 percent), Fluxys (19 percent), Enagás (16 percent) and Axpo (5 percent).