Creative Commons

Nowadays, the issue of energy security is a vital one due to the compelling needs of our society and due to what cannot be overseen: the energy resources are going to run out sometime. Thus, it’s a fact that energy from fossil fuels will some time “extinct” and will effectively be substituted with RES. In the meantime, there is a persistent effort to secure energy supply. Because without energy, we do nothing. And this is something that is surely taken into account by the European Union. The last years it has taken place a great discussion in Europe regarding all the possible ways to guarantee the energy supply for its countries and to safeguard the supply and transit of natural gas. And even more due to its members’ engagement to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, introduced with the Res Directive. Natural gas is the cleanest of all the fossil fuels, so it’s the best alternative to oil, in order to help reduce the atmosphere’s pollution. Being a continent with a little natural gas production, Europe is mainly a downstreamer, relying on other countries and mainly on Russia. The recent developments have urged the need of diversification of its energy sources, as it’s going to be analyzed in the present thesis, having as a result the discussion of many pipelines-projects. Among them, lays the Southern Gas Corridor, whose essential part is the TAP pipeline. The fact that the above pipeline, at its major part transcends the Greek territory, and specifically the North part of Greece, motivated me to examine the whole regime to which is subject, “exploring” also, the roots of the pipeline, .i.e. the two pipelines that connect this to the Shah Deniz field, constituting the inevitable link of the TAP pipeline to the natural gas. However, my analysis on that part of the project is concentrating mainly on the ECT regime applicable there and not in the internal legislation, while regarding the TAP there is a connection to European but Greek as well, law. Thus, I provide an analysis of the specific conditions regulated under both the ECT and the European and more specifically the Greek law as far as it concerns the purely “Greek” part of the pipeline, regarding the issues arising from the rooting of this pipeline, which let’s hope that will be the beginning of a greater energy interconnection between the States securing a safe energy flow and guarantying energy security for all the countries involved.