TIRANA (Albania), September 18 (SeeNews) – Albanian state-owned gas infrastructure operator Albgaz said work on the establishment of a joint venture with Italian gas infrastructure company Snam for the operation and maintenance of the Albanian section of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) is expected to be completed in October.
The joint venture will be important for the operation and maintenance of TAP, which is now under construction, Albgaz director Arber Avrami said in a statement last week.
In June, Snam said it signed an agreement with Albgaz to create a joint venture for the maintenance of the Albanian section of TAP. The joint venture will be 75% owned by Albgaz and 25% by Snam, the Italian company said at the time.
According to Snam, the joint venture would also facilitate potential future technical collaboration for the development of the Albanian gas market.
In July 2017, Snam signed a memorandum of understanding with Albgaz to support the development of a gas infrastructure system that will be managed by Albgaz, which was set up in 2017 for this purpose. The MoU came in relation to the gas market development that will be launched after the completion of the TAP pipeline.
Connecting with the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) at Greece's border with Turkey, TAP will stretch across northern Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea before reaching Italy's coast where it will connect to the Italian natural gas network.
TAP is part of the Southern Gas Corridor, which also comprises the South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP) crossing Azerbaijan and Georgia, and TANAP.
The shareholders of TAP are BP, Azerbaijan’s state company Socar and Italy’s Snam with 20% each, Belgium’s Fluxys with 19%, Spain’s Enagas with 16% and Swiss-based Axpo with 5%.