Other Permit Awarded

On 22 May 2014, Terna confirmed that all necessary permits for the construction of the Italian section of the Italy–Montenegro HVDC interconnector were in place, clearing the way for submarine cable laying to begin from the Italian coast. This milestone came nearly three years after the declaration of public utility for the Italian section was issued on 28 July 2011, reflecting the time required to obtain detailed construction permits, marine licences, and environmental authorisations across the multiple Italian jurisdictions involved in the 16 km onshore and approximately 313 km Italian-waters submarine route. Critically, the equivalent detailed construction permits in Montenegro were still not in place at this point — they would not be obtained until August 2016 for the marine and terrestrial cables and January 2017 for the converter station at Lastva Grbaljska. This cross-jurisdiction permitting gap, with the Italian side ready two years before Montenegro, was the primary driver of the project's extended cable lead time. Nexans, awarded the €340 million cable EPCI contract in 2012, was able to begin manufacturing and laying cable from the Italian coast during 2015–2016, completing approximately 136 km of submarine cable from the Italian landfall before the Montenegrin construction permits enabled work to extend across the Adriatic. The three separate marine campaigns by Nexans' cable-laying vessel Skagerrak, each covering approximately 160 km, were sequenced to accommodate this regulatory asymmetry between the two countries.