Fourteen different options have been evaluated for the landfall of Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) project in Italy, said the country’s Environment Minister Gian Luca Galletti, Italian media reported.
As for the protests held in Italy’s Puglia region due to the removal of olive trees as part of construction of the pipeline, the minister expressed confidence that common sense will prevail in the end.
The minister recalled that once the construction work is completed, these olive trees will be replanted.
Earlier, Italian Council of State gave green light to construction of TAP in the country, rejecting appeals from the Puglia regional government.
The Council of State ruled that the TAP project had provided sufficient details on the environmental impact of the project.
To avoid any impact on the San Foca beach in Italy, TAP is building a 1.5km micro-tunnel. This state-of-the-art engineering minimizes environmental impact and renders the pipeline invisible.
To start building the micro-tunnel – at a site approximately 800m inland from the beach – TAP, as a first step, needs to move and store 231 olive trees, which will later be replanted at the same location.
To enable building the micro-tunnel, TAP will move 211 olive trees as a first step. As a second step, TAP will then move and store an additional approximately 2,000 olive trees along the pipeline’s 8km route, from the micro-tunnel exit to the Pipeline Receiving Terminal (PRT).
Once the pipeline construction activities are completed in 2019, the olive trees will be brought back and planted in their original perimeter.
TAP is a part of the Southern Gas Corridor which is one of the priority energy projects for the European Union.
TAP project envisages transportation of gas from the Stage 2 of development of Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz gas and condensate field to the EU countries.
The pipeline will be connected to the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) on the Turkish-Greek border, run through Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea, before coming ashore in Italy’s south.
TAP will be 878 kilometers in length (Greece 550 km, Albania 215 km, Adriatic Sea 105 km, and Italy 8 km). Its highest point will be 1,800 meters in Albania’s mountains, while its lowest point will be 820 meters beneath the sea.
