Title: Europe's Keystone XL: Planned gas pipeline is reckless
Headings: Europe’s Keystone XL: Planned gas pipeline is reckless
Europe’s Keystone XL: Planned gas pipeline is reckless
The Southern Gas Corridor risks locking in higher fossil fuel dependence and wasting colossal amounts of public money
By Anna Roggenbuck

Content: Yet Europe’s – and humanity’s – fossil fuel obsession looks far from over as the EU is nowadays advancing what can be considered as the European version of the Keystone XL pipeline. Stretching across 3,500 kilometres from Azerbaijan’s Caspian coast to southern Italy, the Southern Gas Corridor is planned as a chain of mega-pipelines designed to feed Europe’s energy appetite with extra 10 billion cubic meters of gas every year, an amount that could later be doubled. The European Investment Bank (EIB) is considering a €2 billion loan, the largest in Europe’s history, for the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, the western section of the Southern Gas Corridor. It is also looking into supporting the central section, the Trans Anatolian Pipeline with a loan worth €1 billion. But the justifications for such an enormous undertaking are questionable at best. Report: Green anger as EU prepares to subsidise dash for gas
Does Europe even need more gas? Data shows quite the opposite. European gas demand has been dropping since about a decade, and gas imports are actually likely to shrink over the next 35 years, as the European Commission itself forecasts. In fact, as the EU’s Court of Auditors has recently pointed out, even these forecasts have been inflated due to the Commission’s incapability for generating projections of EU gas demand.