European Commission names key energy projects
The European Commission adopted on October 15 a list of some 250 key energy infrastructure projects, the Commission's report published on its official website reads.
The projects within the Southern Gas Corridor, which envisage the transportation of Caspian region's gas through Georgia and Turkey to the European countries, are also included in the list of "projects of common interest" (PCI).
In particular, the European Commission included two routes in the list: one crossing South-East Europe and reaching Austria, the other one reaching Italy through the Adriatic Sea, and including one or more of the following PCIs: Trans Anatolia Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), the "Expansion of the South-Caucasus Pipeline"and the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline; Gas compression station at Kipi (Greece); Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP); gas pipeline from Greece to Italy via the Adriatic Sea (Interconnector Turkey-Greece- Italy, ITGI); gas pipeline from Bulgaria to Austria via Romania and Hungary.
The projects of common interest will benefit from accelerated licensing procedures and improved regulatory conditions and may have access to financial support from the Connecting Europe Facility, under which a 5.85 billion euros budget has been allocated to trans-European energy infrastructure for the period 2014-20.
"This will facilitate their faster implementation and make them more attractive to investors," the report said.
The list includes up to 140 projects in the field of electricity transmission and storage, about 100 projects in the field of gas transmission, storage and LNG, and several oil and smart grids projects.
The Southern Corridor is one of the EU's priority energy projects aimed at diversifying the routes and sources of energy supply, thereby increasing secure delivery. Gas to be produced during the second phase of the Azerbaijani Shah Deniz field development is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor projects.
In late June the Shah Deniz Consortium selected TAP as the route to transport its gas to European markets. TAP is designed to transport gas from the Caspian region via Greece and Albania and across the Adriatic Sea to southern Italy and then to Western Europe.
The initial capacity of the TAP pipeline will be 10 billion cubic meters per year with the possibility of expanding to 20 billion cubic meters per year.
TAP shareholders are BP (20 percent), SOCAR (20 percent), Statoil (20 percent), Fluxys (16 percent), Total (10 percent), E.ON (9 percent) and Axpo (5 percent). The construction of TAP is planned to start in 2015.