Azernews.Az

ATHENS – Greece has reiterated its support for the European Union's 'South Corridor' strategy, which stipulates the transportation of the Caspian natural gas to the European markets via the Balkans and Italy.
Greece advocates the diverse energy and transit routes, which are vital to enhancing both European and its own energy security, Greek Minister of Environment and Energy, Tina Birbili was quoted by Trend as saying.
The construction of adequate energy infrastructure and the upgrade of the existing one are important to the effectiveness of the 'South Corridor' energy strategy, the Greek minister added.
She said her country is striving for the soonest completion of the Greece-Bulgaria section of the ITGI project.
According to her, the IGB is to be commissioned by 2013, while the continental section of the Greece-Italy and the offshore Poseidon pipelines - by 2015.
"The EU is considering the ITGI as a priority project for the development of the Southern Corridor strategy and will be contributing a fifth of the Poseidon pipeline and a third of the IGB costs, which amount to 100mln and 45mln euros respectively," Birbili said.
ITGI pipeline, one of the key projects of the 'South Corridor' strategy, stipulates supplies of the Azeri gas to Greece and Italy. ITGI includes a modernized Turkish pipeline, as well as two other projects: ITG (connecting pipeline Turkey-Greece) and IGI (Greece-Italy), known as Poseidon.
The capacity of the planned sub-sea pipeline, Poseidon, is 8-10bn cubic meters of gas a year. The pipeline with a length of 212 kilometers will run along the Adriatic sea-bed, from the Greek Stavrolimenasa to Italian Otranto. Italian company Edison is in charge of construction of the pipeline, which is to be completed by 2012.
The ITGI pipeline capacity is planed to make up 11.8bn cubic meters of gas a year.
Greece will receive 3.6bn cubic meters of gas, and the rest - Italy. ITGI pipeline will run from Azerbaijan through existing gas pipeline Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum to Georgia and Turkey, and further to Greece and Italy. The pipeline is scheduled for commissioning in 2015.