THESSALONIKI: Greece launched construction on a 550-kilometre (342-mile) section of the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), with Greece’s Prime Minister Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras eager for the 8,000 jobs for the country’s crisis-hit economy. Planned to operate from 2019, the TAP will bring gas from the vast Azerbaijani Shah Deniz 2 field via western Turkey to Greece, Albania and across the Adriatic to Italy. The TAP is 870 kilometres long, running from Komotini in northeastern Greece to Puglia, Italy. It will cover 215 kilometres across Albania, 105 kilometres under the Adriatic and a final eight kilometres in Italy. Tsipras said that the pipeline would usher Greece and Europe into a new era. “TAP is one of the greatest direct foreign investment projects carried out in Greece,”he said at the ceremony held in Thessaloniki. The prime minister said that for crisis-hit Greece, it means an investment of over 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) and 8,000 jobs. “The Greek economy really needs these jobs,” he added. The 53,000 pipes which are used to build it weigh the equivalent of 72 Eiffel Towers, according to officials. It will have an annual capacity of 10 million cubic metres, to meet the needs of seven million households. “Once completed, TAP will be a major asset in the European energy security tool box,” said European Union (EU) Vice-President MarosSefcovic, who was also present at the ceremony. “By opening up access to gas from Azerbaijan, the TAP will allow many countries, including Central and South East Europe to diversify their sources of gas,” he said. This pipeline is designed to link up with the 1,850 kilometre (1,150 miles) Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) – to be completed in 2018 – and the existing South Caucasus Pipeline (SCP), which links Turkey to the Azerbaijani gas fields in the Caspian Sea through Georgia. The three pipelines together will form what has been called the Southern Gas Corridor. “Southern Gas Corridor will be vital for reaching the energy union objectives of diversification of sources, routes and energy security. Therefore, timely completion is crucial so that gas from the new suppliers can flow to Europe by 2020,”Sefcovic said. The total investment in Shah Deniz 2, including the cost of the pipeline infrastructure, is $40-45 billion. The field will have 16 billion cubic metres of gas production per year.