EUROPEANS WANT TO MERGE SOUTH CORRIDOR GAS MAINS

    BAKU/17.09.10/TURAN: A suggestion was made to merge the South Corridor gas mains yesterday during the Caspian Gas Infrastructure-2010 conference in Baku. Jeremy Ellis from RWE Supply & Trading (Germany) said the projected pipelines ITGI (Interconnection Turkey-Greece-Italy) and Nabucco (Turkey-Bulgaria-Romania-Hungary-Austria) should be merged. He said ITGI and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (Greece-Albania-Italy) taken separately would bear more concentration risks, because they are actually aimed at one and the same country"s market. `Nabucco provides more advantages from this viewpoint. It is also supported by the European Union and by the intergovernmental agreement that will work for 50 years,` he said.
     `ITGI might just continue Nabucco towards Greece and Italy. This would liberate ITGI from dependence on the decision of Turkey"s BOTAS whether to provide (or not) its infrastructure for the ITGI gas in Turkey,` he noted. He also said Nabucco"s timely construction would be an important matter for the region.
     The Vice-President of DEPA, Greece, Spiros Paleoyannis, said the South Corridor pipeline projects had not developed much over the past years. That is why ITGI could become the first stage of Nabucco to accelerate the gas supplies to Europe.
     * The South Corridor includes the South Stream, Nabucco, ITGI and TAP projects. --12C--