Azernews.Az

The Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which will transport natural gas from Azerbaijan to South Italy and Western Europe through Greece, Albania, and the Adriatic Sea, will cross five of the seven regions of Central Macedonia prefecture, Athens News Agency reported.

The pipeline is 543 km long, and 224 km of this will pass through the Serres, Kilkis, Thessaloniki, Imathia and Pella regions.

Details about the project emerged after a meeting on Tuesday between the prefect of Central Macedonia Apostolos Tzitzikostas with TAP Consortium SA Stathis Theodoropoulos and technical consultant Kostas Tsirikis at Prefecture offices in Thessaloniki.

"It is a huge investment worth 1.5 billion euros which, among other things, will create 2,000 jobs directly and 10,000 jobs indirectly, giving a breath of life to the major problem of unemployment that has hit Central Macedonia," Tzitzikostas said.

Tzitzikostas went on to say that he had been reassured that the project would follow internationally recognized standards of health for residents, for security and for the environment.

A consortium of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz gas condensate field development announced its choice of the TAP project in late June, as a gas transportation route to the European markets.

Nabucco West was the second pipeline, which competed for the transportation of Azerbaijani gas to Europe.

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 gas which will be produced in the second phase of Shah Deniz field, is considered as the main source of the project.

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 expected to start in 2015.