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The TAP operating consortium announced the milestone on November 15, mere days after Azerbaijan scored a major political victory in a peace deal with Armenia, ending six weeks of fighting over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh. TAP connects near the Greek-Turkish border with the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP), SGC’s mid-stream pipe that was completed last year. From there it runs for 878 km across Greece and Albania and under the Adriatic Sea, making landfall in Italy. Under its first stage, it will pump up to 10bn cubic metres of gas per year from the BP-operated Shah Deniz field off Azerbaijan to customers in southern Europe.
The TAP consortium is led by BP and Azerbaijan’s national oil company SOCAR, with other members including Italy’s Snam, Belgium’s Fluxys, Spain’s Enagas and Switzerland’s Axpo. The pipeline has now “begun commercial operations”, the consortium said in a statement, although a spokesman clarified to NewsBase that this did not mean it was flowing gas.
“The start of commercial operations means that TAP is ready to transport gas,” the representative said in an email. “Any actual gas flows are up to the shippers’ choice, which they exercise through the daily nomination of the capacity they have booked in TAP.”
Italian buyers have agreed to take 8 bcm per year of TAP’s gas, while Greece is set to receive 1 bcm per year. A further 1 bcm will go to consumers in Bulgaria following the completion of an interconnector with Greece, which is anticipated in the second quarter of 2021. The dominant supplier for these markets is Russia.
The EU has provided substantial regulatory and financial support to SGC over the years, given it will enable countries in southern Europe to diversify their energy imports. It is unlikely that the ambitious project would have been realised without this backing.
Construction on the €4.5bn ($5.3bn) TAP took four and a half years to complete, with the pipeline originally due to have started operations in early 2020. Delays were earlier caused by permitting issues in Italy, where there has been a strong backlash to the pipeline from environmentalists. Construction work this year was also disrupted by coronavirus-related restrictions.
9.1.2 Transport sector news
Fitch revises Georgian Railway’s outlook to stable on sovereign rating action
Fitch Rating has revised the Outlook on JSC Georgian Railway's (GR) Long-Term Foreign- and Local-Currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) to Stable from Negative and affirmed the IDRs at 'BB-'.
The rating actions follow the revision of Georgia's Outlook to Stable from Negative (see 'Fitch Revises Georgia's Outlook to Stable; Affirms at 'BB', dated August 6, 2021 at www.fitchratings.com). This rating action has a direct impact on GR's Outlook as it is considered a government-related Entity (GRE) of the Georgian state based on Fitch's GREs Rating Criteria.
The affirmation reflects Fitch's unchanged assessment of strength of linkage with the Georgian government and the government's incentive to support GR since its last review on 20 November 2020.
GR's Standalone Credit Profile (SCP) is 'b+', which reflects a 'Weaker' assessment for revenue defensibility, 'Midrange' assessment for operating risk, and 'Weaker' financial profile with leverage (Fitch's net adjusted debt to EBITDA) approaching 6.5x in the rating case scenario at end-2024.
Fitch classifies GR as an entity ultimately linked to Georgia under its GRE Rating Criteria and assesses the GRE support score at 22.5, reflecting a combination of following assessment of Key Risk Factors: a 'Strong' assessment for status, ownership and control and financial implications of
54 GEORGIA Country Report October 2021 www.intellinews.com