TAP External Relations Director Michael Hoffman said “These meetings have shown that the TAP project is moving forward in a positive direction.

“All the various ministers and ministries have expressed a great deal of interest in the TAP pipeline and demonstrated a real willingness to support the project going forward,” Mr Hoffman said.

The 520 km TAP project is currently in the front-end engineering design stage and will tie into the existing national gas systems in Greece and Italy. The project is aimed at enhancing both the security and the diversification of gas supplies for the European markets and the pipeline will have an initial capacity of 10 Bcm/a of gas with the possibility of increasing capacity to 20 Bcm/a.