Croatia joins support for TAP gas pipeline

Croatia is joining Greece, Albania, and Italy in pushing for the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, which would bring natural gas to Europe from the Caspian region through Turkey. Representatives from the four nations as well as Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina will meet in Dubrovnik, Croatia, today to give “strong and clear political support for the pipeline and underline its commercial advantages,” Croatian Deputy Foreign Minister Josko Klisovic said. The project, known as TAP, is competing with the Nabucco pipeline plan supported by Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, to ship Azeri natural gas to Europe. Shah Deniz, a gas deposit group led by BP Plc, is expected by July to choose between the two projects to transport 10 billion cubic meters of gas annually to the European Union. The group’s partners also include Statoil ASA, Total SA and State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, or Socar. “Our message to Shah Deniz is that TAP is less costly as it’s shorter, and that all the governments involved support it,” Klisovic said in Zagreb yesterday.

T-bills.

Greece sold 1.625 billion euros of six-month treasury bills yesterday to roll over maturity debt, the Public Debt Management Agency (PDMA) said. The T-bills were priced to yield 4.2 percent, unchanged from a previous May auction. The sale’s bid-cover ratio was 1.70, down from 1.71 in the previous auction. The amount raised included 375 million euros in non-competitive bids.

ELA funding.

Emergency central bank funding to Greece’s commercial lenders dropped by 40 percent in May, Bank of Greece data showed yesterday. Emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) from the Bank of Greece stood at 19.93 billion euros at the end of May from 33.43 billion euros a month earlier. Over the same period, ECB funding, which comes cheaper to Greek banks, rose 7.4 percent to 65.40 billion euros. The Bank of Greece did not provide details on each bank’s use of the facility.