Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. 22 / Trend A. Badalova /
Greece's gas company DEPA is ready to become a shareholder in Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) project, International Oil Daily reported with the reference to the company's spokesman.
According to the spokesman, the final decision on the company's participation in TAP project has to be made by the Greek government.
"Depa is ready to do it [participate in TAP] ... but the final decision belongs to the Greek government, so we have to wait for this," the spokesman said.
Currently DEPA together with Italian Edison are the shareholders in ITGI project, which has been recently excluded by Shah Deniz consortium from the list of projects to transport Azerbaijani gas to Europe.
Yesterday Bloomberg reported with the reference to the Greek newspaper Imerisia, citing unidentified people in the Greek Energy Ministry, that the Greece's gas company DEPA may buy a stake of as much as 15 percent in the TAP venture.
Earlier the official representative in TAP project told Trend that TAP had always been open to other shareholders joining the project.
TAP is one of the Southern gas Corridor projects, which is designed to transport Azerbaijani gas via Greece and Albania and across the Adriatic Sea to southern Italy and further into Western Europe.
TAP's shareholders are EGL of Switzerland (42.5 percent), Norway's Statoil (42.5 percent) and E.ON Ruhrgas of Germany (15 percent).
The total length of the pipeline is about 800 kilometers. The initial pipeline capacity of TAP will be 10 billion cubic metres per year, expandable to 20 billion cubic metres per year.