A journey along the route of Tap, the gas pipeline connecting Asia and Europe, five years after the infrastructure came into operation.
This is the second of two parts of the feature dedicated to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, Tap – the first part can be read here
It was 30 December 2020 when the first three million cubic metres of gas were delivered to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline. Since then, Tap, the company that operates it, has presented itself as a promoter of the energy transition that Italy, and above all Europe, needed. Or at least that is what the Italian government, led first by Giuseppe Conte earlier and then by Giorgia Meloni, has declared. Despite the misgivings that spilled over into protests, the project has never paused, continuing its expansion eastward, into the Balkans, and westward along the Adriatic backbone, with the aim of increasing storage and transport capacity.
Inadequate compensation and violations of the Aarhus Convention – which establishes the obligation of adequate consultation with the communities involved – are just some of the outcomes of a power imbalance exploited by the company and of an intense lobbying effort between the multinational and the territories it crosses. This allowed the company to press ahead with the project despite opposition from local communities in the countries traversed.
To understand how the current situation came about, it is useful to retrace the pipeline's route geographically. The starting point is Shah Deniz, in Azerbaijan, one of the largest gas fields in the world. From there, gas is transported through Georgia and Turkey via the South Caucasus Pipeline (Scp) and the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (Tanap).
Tap – Trans Adriatic Pipeline – is the final segment of this energy infrastructure. It begins at Kipoi, on the border between Turkey and Greece, where the first European compression station is located. It crosses Greece, passing mainly through agricultural areas that were once cultivated, before entering Albania, where it continues to affect rural areas and productive farmland. After crossing the country, the pipeline plunges beneath the Adriatic Sea and finally comes ashore on the coast of Salento, completing a route 877 kilometres long.
In February 2015, a year before construction of the pipeline began, Panagiotis Lafazanis, the Greek minister for Reconstruction, Productive Activities, Environment and Energy, visited the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, who remains in office to this day. On that occasion, Aliyev underscored the strategic importance of the pipeline for Azerbaijan, noting that it would be crucial for increasing gas exports to Europe.
"The Greek government fully supports the pipeline," Lafazanis declared at the time. The pipeline was set to pass through the municipalities of Serres and Kavala, but opposition from local farmers, scientific organisations and activists highlighted the potential impacts of the project. "The main problem we wanted to avoid was that, in the event of an accident – an explosion, for instance – the damage would severely affect the surrounding area," recalls Michalis Davis, engineer and founder of the Greek No Tap movement.
In October 2013, the municipal council of Serres voted unanimously to reroute Tap so that it would not pass through highly productive agricultural land, as requested by the Greek No Tap movement, and to move the compressor station away from inhabited areas, in order to avoid risks for those who live and work there.
Working alongside them was lawyer Michalis Tremopoulos: "In 2014, I managed to submit a motion to annul the construction of the pipeline to the Council of State," he recalls.
The benefits for the country were described as strategic, economic and social, but the goal was never to supply Greece with natural gas – it was to get the pipeline to Italy so as to transport the gas to central Europe.
Michalis Tremopoulos
Lafazanis then convened the citizens of Serres and Kavala for a joint meeting, presenting himself as open to dialogue. Within a week, the castle crumbled. Tap offered the government, by way of compensation, ambulances, computers for schools and donations to build roads and pavements, thereby managing to push the project forward.
"We cannot say whether unlawful means were used to promote Tap, but it seems that those who had taken unanimous decisions against the project did not follow through to the end," says Sakis Boikos, a teacher and No Tap activist who describes the situation as "a serious political immorality", while noting that all the "compensatory benefits" were, paradoxically, entirely lawful.
Among the farmers who opposed it, Themis Kalpakidis went on hunger strike. "If it happened again, I would do it all over," says Kalpakidis, who was also arrested while attempting to block construction of the pipeline: "We reported them, but in the end it was us who got arrested." Greece, despite having been presented on numerous occasions as a Mediterranean gas hub alongside Italy, has never made stable use of the gas transported.
Albania, too, has never benefited from the gas transported by Tap, despite the government having promoted the project as an economic and political opportunity to facilitate the country's entry into the European Union and secure access to gas. The promises made so far have not been kept, while the company continues to claim that it will provide Albania with gas access in conjunction with the expansion of its capacity.
"We are now part of this European pipeline network. Even though we are not using it and have no concrete plan to use it," states Gjergj Bojaxhiu, former Deputy Minister of Economy, Trade and Energy.
According to the project's official documentation, public consultations were held, but along the pipeline route — from Berat to Fier — no one appears to have been adequately informed or involved. Many residents only learned about Tap when they saw bulldozers invading their fields.
Most farmers received small compensation payments or lost their land altogether. Misir Sylovari, a former farmer from Strum, a hamlet in the province of Fier, recounts: "We had no information. We didn't know where the project would go. We received threats from the police. When they arrived, we didn't speak. They started working, but if we had obstructed the machines, we would have been in trouble."
Marjus Musko, also a farmer, had a similar experience. The company abused its power through threats and retaliation, rather than seeking to establish fair compensation for the loss of his land: "When I received the money from Tap, they told me: 'Either you accept this money, or we'll invest it in the village school.'" Musko also recalls that when construction began, Tap destroyed the town's main road, causing serious disruption to residents' daily movement for over a year. Furthermore, the compensation for the loss of his land was negligible: "The only land we had was devastated. After seven years, we received only crumbs: 400,000 lekë." Around four thousand euros.
Now, Tap is promoting the expansion of the pipeline as an opportunity for new territories, including Slovenia, Hungary, Serbia and North Macedonia. But the stories gathered in Salento, Greece and Albania raise the same doubts about the potential costs for these areas. Some of these countries do not import gas, while others lack the infrastructure needed to use it. The sacrifice of communities that depended heavily on agriculture comes at the expense of a "green transition" that privileges some countries over others. Moreover, it is a plan to renew the interests of major fossil fuel companies — from Eni to Snam, from Bp to Socar — and of authoritarian states such as Azerbaijan, which reconfirm their central role within a framework that should instead foresee their absence.
Rather than incentivising the shift away from fossil fuels and the reduction of methane emissions, these investments continue to favour natural gas, serving the interests of central Europe — the primary beneficiary of this export — which appear increasingly at odds with the objectives of the Paris Agreement. From Fier to Kavala all the way to Melendugno, local communities' attempts at opposition have been systematically ignored in order to push forward a project deemed of strategic interest, despite gas demand being in decline and the European energy landscape undergoing change. In Melendugno, on 12 May, a crucial hearing in the trial against Tap will take place: it could be the last opportunity to shed light on responsibilities and to give a voice to those who, until now, have remained on the margins of decision-making.
