Greek, Italian, Cypriot and Israeli officials are scheduled to sign a Memorandum of Cooperation in Rome tomorrow as a further step in the long road leading to the development of East Med, a 6.2 billion-euro project designed to transmit natural gas along a route stretching from Israel to Europe.

Greece will be represented by the energy ministry’s secretary general Mihalis Veriopoulos at the meeting, to be staged as a prelude to an Intergovernmental Agreement for the pipeline project expected to be signed in Cyprus at the end of this year. The Cyprus agreement, which will also include Italian representation, will be a crucial step for the project’s investment prospects.

In the lead up to tomorrow’s  memorandum, Greece Cyprus and Israel had signed a joint declaration on June 15 in recognition of the significant progress made with preliminary technical and financial plans concerning the East Med project.

The energy ministers of Greece, Cyprus and Israel signed the declaration in June as part of a summit meeting at which the heads of state of all three countries made commitments to develop the project.

The East Med pipeline is planned to cover 1,900 kilometers underwater at a depth of as much as three kilometers and transfer approximately 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas, annually, from deposits in the southeast Mediterranean towards Europe.

The project is receiving full support from the European Commission as it represents a new natural gas supply source that promises to reduce Europe’s major energy reliance on Russia.