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| Obama's Greece visit in 2016 |
28.04.2017 17:35
Baku, Fineko/abc.az. The U.S. sees Greece as a key country for gas supplies to the EU, and this was officially announced yesterday within the Istanbul Summit of the Atlantic Council.
So, the U.S. Ambassador in Athens Geoffrey Pyatt stated that there’s a real potential for Greece to emerge as a significant European energy hub if the opportunities that are present now can be locked in.
“This would be an important driver of investment, going forward, and would help to answer the question that Greeks are asking, which is what drives their economy going forward as they begin to come out of this seven year crisis period and lay the foundation for sustainable growth,” the ambassador said.
He said that from this angle, there’s a lot more going on in Greece than, I think, a lot of people appreciate.
“The signature example, of course, is TAP. It’s important to recognize that project; the first new energy infrastructure built anywhere in Europe specifically to carry non-Russian gas. TAP is twenty percent complete in Greece now – twenty percent of the pipe is already laid. It’s very much, it’s been very impressive to me to see how strong the political support for that project is across the government, especially when I travel in Northern Greece. Everybody’s focused on the job creation that TAP represents and the potentiality to do even more,” Ambassador Pyatt said.
He added that there are also significant developments with the government’s push to develop this north-south corridor.
“Greece already has excess or unused capacity at its Revithoussa plant, the gasification facility, but there is also an ambitious proposal for Alexandroupolis – both of which the United States supports as part of this broader goal of advancing diversification. And then the other piece, and I was especially interested to hear Keith’s point about the commercial ripeness of some of these Eastern Mediterranean plays because one thing that’s very interesting to me is the overlay between these potential commercial arrangements in the Eastern Mediterranean and the already existing strategic cooperation,” the ambassador said.
In his opinion, Greece is building on solid ground when it begins to develop this commercial potentiality.
"And all of which would have the effect, to finish where I started, of advancing the U.S. strategic objective, which is to continue to support energy diversification across Europe,” the diplomat added.
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