European Commissioner for Energy Union Maros Sefcovic is talking about bright future of Southern Corridor as an alternative to South Stream; however, many Europeans doubt the success of the project. The European Union's officials are concerning the possibility to buy natural gas from Israel. This could be the chance to diversify sources of fuel delivery and to greatly reduce dependance from the Russian gas. The project is supported by Israel, as the party concerned, and by Greece along with Cyprus through the territories of which the gas will be transitted. Economists estimate the Israeli gas reserves at 1 trillion cubic meters. According to preliminary estimates, the total project cost will be €3.5-5 billion. Italian deputy economy minister Claudio De Vincenti said that this project “will play an important role in diversifying the EU's gas market”. Because of Russia's refusal to participate in the South Stream construction, the European countries have to search for new partners, and this gives a reason for construction of a new gas corridor. The gas pipeline was a priority project with a total cost of $45 billion. However, the new gas pipeline may also turn out to be just a paper work as its route may cause economic disputes. Especially, it refers to a deep water area between Cyprus and Crete that can put in doubt economic appropriateness of the project. The European officials believe that there is a lot of work to be done and that the project's profitability should be examined carefully. Vice-President of the European Commission Maros Sefcovic noted that area between Cyprus and Crete, as it appears from the offer of Cyprus and Greece, creates certain difficulties so that the best decision would be to evaluate the economic efficiency of the project.
