Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. 23 / Trend A.Badalova, V.Zhavoronkova/
Focusing mainly on the Italian market makes the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) project non-strategic, international analysts believe.
Robert M. Cutler, senior research fellow at the Institute of European, Russian & Eurasian Studies at the Carleton University believes that TAP makes landfall in a part of Italy that is poorly connected to the European gas pipeline system at large.
"It is simply not at all clear that there is sufficient demand in Italy itself for such gas, particularly given the re-opening last October of gas imports by Italy from Libya after their temporary halt during the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi," Mr Cutler wrote Trend in an e-mail.
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.
Earlier this week the consortium of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas condensate field development excluded ITGI from the list of those being considered to export Azerbaijani gas to the European countries, and made TAP a priority route for export of Azerbaijani gas to Italy. The decision was made in accordance with the previously announced criteria for the export of gas (10 billion cubic meters) under the Shah-Deniz-2 project to the European countries.
Editor-in-chief at Eurasia Energy Observer Andrej Tibold told Trend that the reason why TAP is still in the running, could be because it has a stronger lobbying position within the Shah Deniz consortium than ITGI. Norwegian Statoil, which is Shah Deniz shareholder, holds a 42.5-percent share in the TAP, he stressed.
TAP's shareholders are EGL of Switzerland (42.5 percent), Norway's Statoil (42.5 percent) and E.ON Ruhrgas of Germany (15 percent).
Senior Fellow of Jamestown Foundation (Washington), Trend Expert Council member Vladimir Socor believes that the implementation of the TAP, which proposes to transport 10 bcm of Azerbaijani gas, would deprive central Europe, which needs both the added volumes and the diversification, of these opportunities, by redirecting gas to southern Europe instead.
"The Italian market and small Greek market are already saturated and well-diversified," Socor, said in his publication, published on Jamestown Foundation's official website.
The initial pipeline capacity of the TAP will be 10 billion cubic metres (bcm) per year, expandable to 20 billion cubic meters per year.
Socor believes that diverting 20 bcm annually to southern Europe, instead of central Europe, would be anti-strategic.