European Commission Vice-President with responsibility for the Energy Union Maroš Šefčovič travelled to Baku on Wednesday 14 February where he will take part in the fourth meeting of the Southern Gas Corridor Advisory Council alongside Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, the energy ministers from the countries involved (Azerbaijan, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia, Greece, Italy, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey), energy operators and international financing institutions.
The Southern Gas Corridor is an EU strategic initiative to bring Caspian, Central Asian, Middle Eastern and the Black Sea gas resources to the European markets.
It aims to carry gas from the Azerbaijani Shah Deniz-2 field in the Caspian Sea to the EU via Georgia and Turkey and is based on three linked infrastructure projects: the South Caucasus gas pipeline (SCP), the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline (TANAP), which will cross Turkey; and the Trans-Adriatic pipeline (TAP), which will bring Azeri gas from Turkey to Italy via Greece and Albania.
On 6 February, the European Investment Bank (EIB) approved the largest loan in its history to an energy infrastructure project: €1.5 billion for the TAP.
The Southern Gas Corridor “has a strategic importance for European energy security, especially in the most vulnerable parts of Europe, such as South-East Europe and Southern Italy. We all stand to gain from this ‘bridge’ between the EU market and the Caspian region”, Šefčovič stated before leaving for Baku, where he was to receive a detailed update from the operators and consortia on various projects of the corridor. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)