An article on the Tap pipeline from “Sole 24 Ore”

The author, with the Albanian photographer Gent Shkullaku who documented the trip, followed the 215 kilometers of natural gas pipeline from the border with Greece to the waves of the Adriatic.

In two years the methan-pipeline will bring methane from the Caspian Sea to Europe. To complete the line there is still no laying of the pipe under the Adriatic. The tube will immerse itself in the Adriatic for 105 kilometers, then the pipeline will wind through the province of Lecce for the 8 kilometers necessary to reach the gas reception plant designed at the Captain's farm.

It reads in the article: "The gas pipeline from Azerbaijan has been laid up to here, and on the beach at kilometer 215 begins the stretch of Italian competence, a stretch not yet laid.

The construction site of the last kilometer - even if it is in Albania - from a design and construction point of view depends on the Italian side, of which it is the terminal, and therefore depends on Tap Italy.

Project manager is the Norwegian Johannes Irgens; the client Tap Italia is represented by the Engineer Mr. Laverghetta. Contractors like Saipem from San Donato Milanese, Nautilus from Venice and Luxembourg's Jan De Nul work there.

The yard on the beach occupies the alluvial plain of the mouth of the Seman river, lagoons and yellow salt marshes, canals, thickets and reeds, thick and heavy sand alternating with fine silt that looks like the clay caranto of the Venice lagoon.

It is no coincidence that Nautilus from Venice, whose headquarters is in Fusina between lagoons and yellow salt marshes, work as contractors.

They know how to dig a trench in coarse and heavy sand, and in very fine silt, to lay and bury the pipe of a methane pipeline, or to insert a sheet pile in the caranto that keeps the salt water away from the mud; here is Tiziano with the blond ponytail and here is Stefano who lives in Malcontenta between canals and reeds, and they speak in Venetian dialect with everyone as if everyone understood, they speak in Venetian dialect also with the Albanians. But the Albanians seem to understand very well the lagoon idiom of Stefano and Tiziano of the Nautilus of Venice. "

Source: Il Sole 24 Ore