The Vertical Corridor puts Greece in a leading position, and Europe in a leading position more broadly, US Assistant Secretary for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt told the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA-MPA) in an interview posted Sunday.
Pyatt was speaking to ANA-MPA and journalist Sophia Papadopoulou from Washington on his recent visit to Athens for the REPowerEU Diversification Workshop by the European Commission and the Greek Environment and Energy Ministry on the project that aims to boost energy security and infrastructure in Southeast and Central Europe. It was attended by ministers and energy leaders from Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Croatia, Austria, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Ukraine.
The State Department official said that the US saw the Vertical Corridor as “a project that can be accomplished with very low capital expenditure, but will have a significant return on investment in terms of building energy security for the wider region.”
Referring to his contacts, Pyatt said that “the main takeaway from my regional conversations on this is the importance of having the various TSOs (transmission system operators), the gas transmission companies, working together to create what they call ‘a pancake tariff’ so that you don’t have companies that want to take advantage of this vertical corridor or are having to pay separate tariffs at each stage of the process, which makes it uneconomical.”
Speaking of his “excellent talks” in Athens with Environment and Energy Minister Thodoros Skylakakis, Deputy Minister Alexandra Sdoukou, Foreign Affairs Minister George Gerapetritis, Professor Thanos Dokos, national security advisor the the prime minister, and others, Pyatt said, “Greece’s role is more important than ever, both in terms of its leadership on energy transition, the huge growth that’s happening in renewable generation, wind, solar, leadership in new areas like clean hydrogen, but also a really, really important regional role.”
From his talks in Athens, he noted “a consistent message across the board there in terms of Greece’s determination to exercise leadership” as well as “the really dramatic transformation of Greece’s role as this key energy hub for the European Union and for Southeastern Europe.” He also highlighted the convergence between the US vision that the Secretary Antony Blinken is advancing, and its convergence with what Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is leading.
