Azernews.Az

Focusing mainly on the Italian market makes the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) project non-strategic, international analysts say.

Robert Cutler, senior research fellow at the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at 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," Cutler told Azerbaijan’s Trend news agency 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.

The consortium of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas condensate field development has excluded Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy (ITGI) from the list of projects being considered to export Azerbaijani gas to 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 Phase 2 of the Shahdaniz project from 2017.

Editor-in-chief of 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 a Shah Deniz shareholder, holds a 42.5-percent share in the TAP, he said.

Besides Statoil, TAP's shareholders are EGL of Switzerland with 42.5 percent and E.ON Ruhrgas of Germany with 15 percent.

Vladimir Socor, Senior Fellow at the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, says that the implementation of TAP project, 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 on Jamestown Foundation's website.

The initial capacity of TAP will be 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year, expandable to 20 billion cubic meters.

Socor believes that diverting 20 bcm annually to southern Europe through the TAP pipeline, instead of central Europe, would be anti-strategic.

Harry Sachinis, CEO of the Public Gas Corporation of Greece (DEPA), said the TAP project does not have all the necessary licenses and approvals for it to be ready before the time that Shah Deniz II needs to make its final investment decision. "And that's a key thing because if that project is delayed because it doesn't have the appropriate regulatory approvals, licenses and intergovernmental agreements in place that ITGI has, that puts Shah Deniz II at risk of delay," Sachinis said.