European Investment Bank Eyes to Fund TAP

TIRANA, March 7

The Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) is capturing the attention of international financial institutions. After the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Investment Bank is showing interest in crediting the project. This was confirmed by the head of Division for Central and South Eastern Europe, Flavia Palanza following a meeting she had with the General Director of Southern Gas Corridor. Therefore, the European Investment Bank plans to finance TANAP and TAP project.
According to Palanza, the bank is aware of the aforementioned projects’ importance. This is going to be taken into consideration when the bank will take a decision on financial operations.
Moreover, Palanza said that the bank has not defined a specific figure, but it is expected to be about Euro 2 billion.
By the middle of 2016, former managing director in charge of the Power and Energy and Natural Resources sectors at the EBRD, Riccardo Puliti said the bank was considering the idea of collecting a loan of Euro 1.5 billion for this project. This would be the maximum loan amount that EBRD could provide.
TAP project is an 870-kilometre long pipeline, which will start from the tie-in with the TANAP portion of the Southern Gas Corridor project, at the Greece/Turkey border. The pipeline will then go through Greece and Albania, to eventually cross subsea the Adriatic Sea to end in Puglia, Italy, where it will connect to the Italian natural gas network.

News Source: Monitor