Norway’s Statoil is to leave Trans Adriatic Pipeline project (TAP) by selling its shares.
The news was delivered by Rovnag Abdullayev, President of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) told during an exclusive interview to Azeri ANS TV on July 17th.
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev said during a visit to Milan’s EXPO international trade fair on July 9th that Baku was open to Italian gas infrastructure group Snam to take a stake in the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).
In responding to the reporters’ question about the possibility of Snam’s investment in TAP, Aliyev commented “Why not? If someone would allocate its shares to other companies I don’t see any problems”.
Earlier this week, Snam’s CEO Carlo Malacarne confirmed that there were TAP stakeholders willing to sell their shares to the Italian company.
TAP’s current shareholders are BP (20 percent), the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) (20 percent), Norway’s Statoil (20 percent), Belgium’s Fluxys (19 percent), Spain’s Enagas (16 percent) and Swiss company Axpo (5 percent).