Five years after coming into operation, the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (Tap) is once again being called into question. Is natural gas really clean?
This is the first of two parts of the reportage dedicated to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, Tap – the second part can be read here
"It's just a pipeline, buried at least one metre underground, quietly transporting gas," says Veysalov Vugar, head of external affairs at the company Trans Adriatic Pipeline, Tap, which lends its name to the project. Stretching 878 kilometres, Tap forms the final section of the Southern Gas Corridor, a route that runs from the Azerbaijani Shah Deniz field to Italy, crossing Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea before coming ashore at San Foca, in Puglia. It currently carries 10 billion cubic metres of gas per year, a volume set to double to 20 billion by 2027.
Ten years earlier, in 2017, clinging to olive trees to prevent them from being uprooted, activists in Salento had taken a stand against the project in defence of their territory. Despite the project's official documents citing thorough consultations, the pipeline was imposed from above and protests were brutally suppressed. The infrastructure, justified in the name of energy security, now extends from the sea into the hinterland of the Salentine countryside. Here stands the gas receiving terminal managed by Tap Ag. From the same site, the "Interconnessione Tap" pipeline distributes liquefied natural gas across the rest of Italy; it is managed by Snam, a company engaged in building natural gas transport infrastructure that holds a 20 per cent stake in the consortium operating Tap.
"I use the word repression because dissent was genuinely crushed. And today, faced with the now completed reality of the project, the true legacy of the Tap affair is the string of convictions handed down to dozens and dozens of people who devoted their time, energy and commitment to opposing it," says Francesco Calabro, lawyer for the No Tap activists.
A total of 67 people were convicted, receiving sentences of up to three years and two months' imprisonment, while 25 were acquitted. Running alongside the trial of the activists at the Tribunal of Lecce is a separate case involving the company Tap, the consortium's top management, Saipem S.p.A. — a company offering engineering and construction services to the oil and gas industry — and other firms involved in building the pipeline. The charges relate to environmental pollution, the contamination of the water table with heavy metals, some of them carcinogenic, and the uprooting of olive trees outside the authorised period. According to the judiciary, both the environmental impact assessment and the unified authorisation — both required to approve the project — are unlawful. The trial against those who designed and approved the pipeline, however, has been repeatedly postponed, while the one against the activists moved swiftly, with 18 hearings in just six months, even during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In his office in Lecce, Calabro sighs heavily as he leafs through the documents relating to the convictions handed to the activists. He has never seen such a disparity of treatment in his career, he says: "Beyond the complexity of the proceedings, the fact is that the cases against the activists moved at lightning speed, whereas the same cannot be said for Tap." According to the lawyer, the influence of the company and its shareholders has had a significant impact. "It was difficult, for example, to find technical experts independent of Tap and Snam to whom we could entrust an expert assessment. It was extremely complex work and took many months," he explains.
Today, the pipeline is operational and new institutional figures have come forward to support it, including the current mayor of Melendugno, Maurizio Cisternino, and the municipal administration that had previously spoken out against the project. Last summer, Melendugno accepted a contribution of 70,000 euros from Tap to support the costs of BluFestival 2024, promoting "events of various kinds, ranging from music to art to theatre, from culture to entertainment," as stated on the company's official website. Strongly criticised by the No Tap movement and a section of local residents, it was seen as a move to smooth the path for approval of the pipeline's capacity-doubling project. At present, the competent authorities are assessing whether the proposed expansion requires a new environmental impact assessment to ensure compliance with current regulations and environmental safety.
In the meantime, Snam has already begun construction of the Linea Adriatica, a 425-kilometre gas pipeline that, connecting to Tap, will run from Salento all the way up to Minerbio, in the province of Bologna. The project, partly funded by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Pnrr) and by gas transport tariffs — that is, the costs borne by consumers on their energy bills — aims to increase the capacity to transport methane along the South-North axis towards Europe, effectively turning Italy into a full-fledged "gas hub", despite demand for gas being in decline.
Continued investment in natural gas and the expansion of the pipeline are regarded as strategic priorities by the government led by Giorgia Meloni, which has deepened ties with the authoritarian government of Azerbaijan, led by Ilham Aliyev.
From a European perspective, the Tap project and its expansion have been incorporated into the RepowerEU plan, the European Commission's blueprint for advancing supply source diversification objectives, particularly following the decision to halt Russian gas supplies after the invasion of Ukraine.
The new memorandum of understanding underlines the strategic role of the Southern Gas Corridor in our diversification efforts. Azerbaijan has already increased its natural gas supplies to the EU and this trend will continue, with an increase of four billion additional cubic metres of gas this year and volumes that could more than double by 2027
Kadri Simson, European Commissioner for Energy
An analysis published in 2024 by Ecco Climate, Italy's first independent think tank on climate change, highlighted a number of critical issues. RepowerEU regards increasing Tap's capacity as a viable solution for offsetting Russian supplies in central and south-eastern Europe.
However, there is no evidence attesting to any intention to increase the transport capacity of the South Caucasus Pipeline (Scp) and the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (Tanap), two pipelines connected to Tap. Despite this, Azerbaijani production has increased by 3.5 per cent in 2023 compared to 2022, with oil companies Bp and Total Energies, two of the largest in the world, planning to further increase production from the Absheron and Shah Deniz fields in Azerbaijan.
The doubling of Tap's capacity is just one of many investments in gas infrastructure that the European Union, and Italy in particular, are pursuing despite a significant decline in demand. The Italian government, in collaboration with fossil fuel companies Eni and Snam, has signed several agreements to increase gas imports via pipelines and liquefied natural gas (lng) by sea, involving countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Qatar and the Republic of the Congo, among others.
Gas, considered by the European Union to be the "cleanest" of the fossil fuels, has also been identified as the most suitable to drive the energy transition, since the infrastructure that transports it can be easily converted to hydrogen production. The role of natural gas was also discussed at Cop29, where there were several clashes between those who viewed it as a necessary transitional energy source towards cleaner forms of energy, and those who highlighted its significant climate-altering impact.
"As we know, lignite and coal emit over 50 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. This is where Tap's role becomes crucial, as gas is relatively cleaner compared to other fossil fuels," stated Veysalov Vugar.
Natural gas is composed mainly of methane (CH4), a greenhouse gas far more potent, even if present in much smaller quantities in the atmosphere. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Ipcc), methane has a global warming potential between 28 and 36 times greater than that of CO2 over a 100-year period. This makes it potentially more dangerous for global warming than CO2 if the trend continues to grow steadily. If emissions continue to rise as a result of these investments, their impact could further undermine efforts to mitigate the climate crisis.
Here is the second part of this reportage