Italian Company Interested in TAP Stake

Enel, Italy's biggest utility, is interested in taking a stake of up to 20% in the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), the group's chief executive has said.

The current TAP shareholders are Axpo of Switzerland (42.5%), Norway's Statoil (42.5%), and Germany's E.ON Ruhrgas (15%).

"There's talk of a 10 to 20% share that we would be happy to take. The decision should be taken, I believe, in September or October," Fulvio Conti, the CEO, said on the sidelines of a conference in Brussels.

Earlier on Tuesday, Conti told reporters that while he was ready to take a stake in TAP, the primary goal was to have gas. "I am not a transporter of gas, I am a utiliser of gas," he said. Enel uses gas to fire part of its power generation fleet and to sell to customers.

State-controlled Enel is developing a liquefied natural gas terminal on the island of Sicily and has a stake in the GALSI project which aims to bring Algerian gas into Italy.

TAP is competing with the Nabucco West project to carry 10 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas per year from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz II gas field to Europe, and reduce the European Union's dependence on Russian gas.