Snam: 20-percent interest in TAP would cost around 400 mln euros

A 20-percent interest in the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) project would cost around 400 million euros, Natural Gas Europe reported with the reference to Italian Snam’s CEO Carlo Malacarne. The price has also to do with the current market conditions.

Malacarne also confirmed that there are TAP’s stakeholders willing to sell their shares to the Italian company.

“We will not witness an increase in gas consumption in Europe by 2030. It will be necessary to substitute the current production from the depleting fields with new sources” he said to Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera.

He explained Europe has not to decrease its imports from Russia, but find new partners to import new gas.

“We have to get gas where there is some, in the Caucasus, prospectively in Iran, in North Africa. And here we come into play” he said, adding that Italy should take a more central role in the Mediterranean, and especially in Algeria.

TAP project is a part of the Southern Gas Corridor that will allow Europe to diversify its hydrocarbon supply sources and strengthen energy security. Azerbaijani gas is designed to open the Southern Gas Corridor.

TAP will transport natural gas from the giant Shah Deniz II field in Azerbaijan to Europe. The approximately 870 km long pipeline will connect with the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) at the Turkish-Greek border at Kipoi, cross Greece and Albania and the Adriatic Sea, before coming ashore in Southern Italy.