NEWS AND PRESS RELEASES

Gdf Suez and the will to talk with the territory

09 Jan 2009

French company managers anticipate pathway to disclose their innovative regasification ship project.

With reference to the articles published by the press over the past few days, Gaz De France - Suez company wishes to point out some aspects which, in its opinion, may contribute to stress its search for maximum transparency and information. The project counts on the presence of a latest-generation LNG regasification ship, anchored over 30 kilometres of the Italian coast, so far from the coastline that it falls within international waters. Thanks to the Earth's curvature, nothing will be visible from any beach in the region. The regasification ship will directly inject natural gas into the SNAM national transportation network though a measuring chamber and a simple underground pipeline, identical to over 35 thousand kilometres of methane pipelines already existing in Italy. Therefore, the measuring chamber will be the only visible structure to be built in the municipality of Porto Recanati. This chamber (which anyway will be extremely small in size) will be identical to about 8,000 chambers that are already present on the Italian territory, about a half of which in cities, it will be completely screened by a vegetation belt, and it will therefore be invisible, too.

In this case, the technological progress enables to minimise, if not eliminate, the environmental impact. "We think the concerns published by the press in the past days are due to a still inappropriate knowledge of the project, since it has not yet been presented by the company to Porto Recanati's citizens - said Andrea Galieti, business development manager of the company.

With a view to disclose complete information, Gdf Suez strongly stresses its will to talk with the territory on this issue: "We have communicated and described the characteristics of the project to political authorities at all levels, from the Municipality to Ministries, informing both governments and oppositions" - says Giuseppe Tiranti, referee of the French company for the Marche region - not forgetting trade associations, trade unions and environmentalist associations. As to citizens, since we cannot personally meet everybody, we have planned proper disclosure actions in order to provide people with correct information. A Local Information Office will be soon opened to answer any questions and give useful information. A web site dedicated to the project is also under construction. Last but not least, on our return from holidays we will promote events to present the project to the public. We know that the Municipality is also taking measures in this respect"

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