Azernews.Az

Bulgaria fully supports the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which 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, Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev said at the meeting with participants of the ninth world meeting of Bulgarian mass media on October 14.

Plevneliev mentioned that a decision has been recently made for TAP to be major gas pipeline moving to Europe.

"We don't think that Bulgaria has lost something. We see it as great opportunity and we fully support this project," Plevneliev said, while answering Trend correspondent's question. "We hope that it will run as fast as possible."

Plevneliev went on to say that the gas to be transported through TAP can be also delivered through interconnections to the South East Europe and Balkan countries.

Bulgaria, according to Plevneliev has necessary connections with Macedonia, Serbia, etc., and the country will also definitely build its gas connector with Greece and Turkey.

He also noted that Bulgaria would also like to see other investments from Azerbaijani investors and companies coming to Bulgaria.

In late June the consortium of Azerbaijani Shah Deniz filed development selected TAP as the route to transport its gas to European markets.

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.