TAP agreement about to get finalized

“We had four projects that were competing for bringing the Caspian gas to Europe. Now there are only two, ours and the Western Nabuko, but TAP is in a leading position. The project has recently received strong support from Greece and Italy, to the same level as from Albania, because they have understood that if they don’t support TAP, the winning competitor will be Western Nabuko, which doesn’t leave access to Greece and Italy”, Tungland declared.

Azerbaijan is expected to take the final decision soon and chose one of the remaining projects.

“There’s a group of companies in Azerbaijan who own the Shah Deniz field. These companies have invited us, and together with them we will take the final decision. The plan is to take it by the second trimester of 2013. The equipments will start working on terrain in 2014. We will need to work for three years to complete the construction, and the shareholders are asking us to be ready”, Tungland declared.
    
Due to the great geo-strategic importance, the project has been in the centre of diplomatic battles, especially between Greece and Albania.

“I don’t see any obstacle or other factors against the cooperation of Greece and Albania. This project doesn’t cause or encourage disagreements between the countries, and there’s no reason to expect any problem”, Tungland declared.

The pipeline starts in Komotini, Greece. It continues to Albania and ends in Italy. The project is owned by three companies, the Swiss AKSPO, the Norwegian Statoil, and the German Rurgas, all three of them with a 100 billion EUR market capital. British Petroleum is soon expected to join, after declaring that they are preparing to buy a considerable part of the shares.

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