Italian-Greek electricity link
Greece and Italy opened an underwater 163-kilometer (101-mile) electricity cable yesterday afternoon across the Strait of Otranto, linking the two countries’ electricity grids and permitting the transfer of electricity between Greece and its partners in the European Union, with which it has no land borders. Linked by a teleconference call, Prime Minister Costas Simitis and his Italian counterpart, Silvio Berlusconi, inaugurated the energy link, which is the result of a contract between Greece’s Public Power Corporation and Italy’s ENEL, signed in 1996. The cable, which lies at a depth of 1,000 meters, can carry 500,000 volts of electricity. It cost 340 million euros, of which Greece paid one quarter and Italy the remainder. «This project creates a bridge between Greece, Italy and the rest of Europe. It gives us access to a broader electricity market and gives you the ability to have access to the eastern Mediterranean and Eurasia,» Simitis told Berlusconi. He also referred to an agreement reached for a natural gas link between the two countries.
