Abu Dhabi’s TAQA Looks into Cyprus Interconnector Project

Cyprus's Energy Minister, George Papanastasiou, said on Thursday that Abu Dhabi's TAQA is interested in investing in and supporting the delivery of an electricity connection project the country is developing.

The project is the Great Sea Interconnector (GSI) cable which will link transmission networks of Europe to Cyprus in a project costing 1.9 billion euros ($2.12 billion), and later stretch to Israel.

Speaking at the Investopia conference in Abu Dhabi, Papanastasiou told Reuters that the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has expressed interest in Cyprus's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and is seeking assets that are "ready to go."

Papanastasiou said that the possibility of entering a new licensing round with ADNOC for exploration purposes was not ruled out.

ADNOC previously expressed interest in Cyprus's emerging natural gas sector, the minister confirmed to Reuters in November.

(Reuters - Reporting by Federico Maccioni and Abinaya Vijayaraghavan; Writing by Tala RamadanEditing by Tomasz Janowski)