For a country that is, by most measures, the most hydropower-dependent in Europe, Albania has had remarkably little say over the enormous pipeline running beneath its own soil. The Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, the final 878 km segment of the Southern Gas Corridor through which Azerbaijan’s gas travels from the Caspian to southern Italy, has flowed through Albanian soil since 2020 virtually untouched, merely acting as a pipe in which gas flows from Greece to underneath the Adriatic Sea without much of it stopping at any point along the way. This, however, is slowly beginning to change.

As was confirmed by TAP AG this month, by the fourth quarter of 2027 there will be a new facility built, known as “Fier South,” near the already present ACS03 compressor station, serving as a brand new exit point of the pipeline onto Albanian soil, with ownership transferring to the Albanian government upon completion.

Indeed, this is a relatively mundane project: a metering station, not an energy station or grid. However, the project is of great importance in no way related to its technical complexity, but to what it enables. Almost 100 percent of Albania's electricity is produced using hydropower, as is indicated by Albania's national energy regulatory agency. Such dependence on hydropower is so severe that both officials and NGO's consider the energy system "extremely........

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