Edison SpA (EDN.MI) is ready to send some Caspian natural gas to Bulgaria through the Italy-Turkey-Greece Interconnector, or ITGI, helping reduce Eastern Europe's dependence on Russian energy, Chief Executive Umberto Quadrino said Friday.
"We are ready to examine this possibility as soon as we have availability of gas," Quadrino told Dow Jones Newswires in a telephone interview.
His comments came just weeks after Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov said his country is "very interested" in the Italian company's offer of a link to a possible natural gas pipeline running from the Caspian Sea to Italy via Turkey and Greece.
It is estimated that about 1 billion to 2 billion cubic meters of gas could be available to Bulgaria per year through the ITGI, a project in which Edison is a main partner.
Bulgaria was one of the countries worst hit by the Russia-Ukraine gas row earlier this year, which led to Russian gas being cut to consumer countries in Europe for two weeks.
Edison, which is working with Greece's 65% state-owned gas company DEPA on the 800-kilometer Greece-Italy pipeline - part of the ITGI gas transit corridor - wants to extend the pipeline to southern Italy, aiming to supply about 10 billion cubic meters of gas a year from Azerbaijan to southern Europe.
The ITGI project - which started pumping Azeri gas to Greece via Turkey in 2007 - competes for scarce Azeri gas with the Nabucco pipeline, which also seeks to bring Caspian gas to Europe.
Quadrino said Edison has "a very good chance to be the first company" to conclude a gas supply deal with Azerbaijan. "ITGI project is the most advanced, most feasible and least costly of all," Quadrino said, referring to the two pipeline projects that are seen as equally strategic to the European Union for reducing the Russian stranglehold on Europe's energy supply.
"The negotiations are going on and it's difficult to say when they will be concluded," he added.
ITGI, which is expected to be completed by 2012, is seen as more likely to be ready before Nabucco because it will use existing Turkish and Greek infrastructure. Nabucco, estimated to cost about EUR8 billion, needs to build 3,300 kilometers of pipelines and find annual gas supplies of 30 billion cubic meters.
The Nabucco project, which was conceived in 2002, has seen little progress because of a lack of financing and political commitment from the countries involved. However, the European Commission proposed about EUR200 million in funding for Nabucco earlier this year while it also said ITGI will receive EUR100 million to be extended to Italy.