Medgaz: Long history, long delay

Medgaz has been driven more by the visions of the two governments than by an immediate commercial need

FOR A project costing €0.9bn ($1.2bn) and with such a long history, there seems to have been little hurry in sending the first gas through Medgaz. When the final investment decision was taken, at the end of 2006, start-up was targeted for the first half of 2009. The target slipped to the end of that year, then to September this year, and now to year-end. Delays were attributed to unspecified technical problems, although laying work was completed on-schedule at the end of 2008. Saipem carried out the technically demanding construction of the 24-inch offshore pipeline, running 210 km from Béni Saf, Algeria, to Almería. The firm's Castoro Sei laid the shallow-water parts of the line, working o