EU commissioner says bloc wants partnership for “reliable energy supply from Georgia"

Oliver Varhelyi, the European Union commissioner for neighbourhood and enlargement, on Tuesday told a press briefing in Tbilisi the bloc wanted to have a “partnership in terms of reliable energy supply from Georgia”, and to establish energy security in Georgia, the Caucasus and Europe through the initiative. 

Varhelyi said the Black Sea was "the heart of the plans that we have" and noted the submarine cable project designed to connect the energy transmission infrastructure of Georgia and the EU was "very symbolic for everyone".

Symbolic historically because it will be a permanent tie between Georgia and Europe and the Caucasus and Europe, and symbolic as well because you see that with the Russian war against Ukraine, we need reliable partners. Reliable, trusted partners and allies, be it security, be it the economy, but most importantly these days: be it energy. And Georgia could be one of these partners. You see that we are building new partnerships all around us and the message I come with is that we want to build partnership with you when it comes to reliable energy supply to Europe and through it, also energy security for Georgia and the Caucasus, and for Europe. And I think that through this cable we can start to establish that", Varhelyi said. 

He also highlighted the digital Deep Sea communication cable project that would “connect Georgia to our core networks". 

Again, a permanent tie with Europe. There I think we are making very good progress and this could be the first big project that you will see materialising and starting to deliver. I do hope that we can also speed up the work on the Deep Sea electricity cable and I have some hopes with – this is something that we are still elaborating and exploring – the news I just received a couple of days ago that Georgia is planning to build an LNG terminal that could create additional capacities for bringing gas to Europe", Varhelyi said.

Of course from the other flagship projects we see already the ferry over the Black Sea re-starting – we are also part of this – and I do hope that this ferry would be not only connecting one point of the Black Sea with Georgia, but many other places and trade would be re-established as once it was", he added.

Georgian prime minister Irakli Garibashvili said at the press conference Georgia could use its potential and geographical location “more". 

"We have a huge potential to be a green energy producer. We have an untapped potential of hydro resources, [and] the country is [only] using about 27 percent [of the resource] at this stage. We have 26,000 rivers, besides that we have a lot of great opportunities for wind and solar energy production", Garibashvili said.

The PM also posted on his Twitter account:

Held a very interesting extended meeting between the ????????-????????, as well as IFIs. Unique opportunity to plan our way forward & mobilize resources for implementing flagship projects that are so vital for both ????????&????????. pic.twitter.com/1f1IICpFdH

— Irakli Garibashvili (@GharibashviliGe) November 15, 2022