Croatia, Albania, Montenegro and Bosnia&Herzegovina signed on August 26, 2016, a Memorandum of Understanding with Azerbaijan’s SOCAR over construction of the Ionian Adriatic Pipeline, which is a stretch of the EU's Trans-Adriatic-Pipeline to bring Azeri gas to the region and the EU as of 2020.
Already in 2007, Croatia, Montenegro and Albania signed a declaration on the Ionian Adriatic Pipeline (IAP), which is planned to carry natural gas from Albania via Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia.
IAP would be connected with the 870-kilometre Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which should transport gas from Shah Deniz II, Azerbaijan, via Greece and Albania and the Adriatic Sea, to Italy.
Moreover, there has been created a ТАР and IAP working group which regularly holds meetings in order to synchronize the time of implementation of both projects and agree on the technical issues of connection.
The total planned length of the IAP pipeline from Croatia to Albania is 516 kilometres, with a capacity of 5 billion cubic meters a year.
The Baltic-Adriatic-Black Sea forum brought together 6 presidents and government officials from 12 EU countries and Albania on August 25-26, 2016, in Croatia´s Dubrovnik.
A panel discussion at the «Strengthening European energy security» looked at the benefits of energy cooperation in BABS and the role of LNG terminals linking north and south Europe.
After the signing, Croatia's economy minister Tomislav Panenic said that the future pipeline would provide gas supplies for southeastern Europe. «We have defined our joint initiative for the development of the Ionian-Adriatic gas pipeline as a route that will make sure that these markets are provided with gas. We hope that this route will be a connection between the north and the south and that this may pave the way for a full liberalisation of the gas market in Europe».
The next meeting of the Baltic-Adriatic-Black Sea forum will take place in Poland, Wroclaw, in June 2017.
