The EuroAsia Interconnector project, for the electricity connection of Greece, Cyprus and Israel, has run into further trouble following its consortium’s failure to meet the deadline for a 50 million-euro payment to Norwegian company Nexans as a first installment for cable supply.This deadline was widely viewed as a crash test for the credibility of the consortium, spearheaded by Cypriot entrepreneur Nasos Ktorides, its chief executive officer.The payment failure has given rise to various scenarios concerning the project’s future. Without a doubt, the Cypriot government wants this geostrategically important project to go ahead, while the European Commission, which has offered funding support worth 657 million euros, through the Connecting Europe Facility, can be expected to become more actively involved in an attempt to push the project forward.Given its commitment to the EuroAsia Interconnector project, Greek power grid operator IPTO could also intensify its efforts to keep the grid interconnection project afloat.IPTO has pledged to contribute 33 percent of the investment if legal due diligence is successfully completed, while an Israeli fund that has expressed interest could provide an equivalent amount. Under such a scenario, IPTO and the Israeli fund would hold 66.66 percent of the EuroAsia Interconnector project’s equity capital.It remains unclear as to why the EuroAsia Interconnector consortium failed to meet yesterday’s payment deadline, despite having recently received the required 50 million euro amount from the CEF. According to one resulting scenario,’s a new consortium could now be sought for the project’s development.A growing number of Cypriot government officials have been distancing themselves from the Euroasia Interconnector project ever since Brussels’ recent warning that the 657 million-euro CEF sum secured for it would be reexamined if the project’s schedule is not maintained.Cyprus’ energy minister Giorgos Papanastasiou recently noted the project is still 1.1 billion short of its 1.9 billion-euro budget, which was revised upwards from a previous total of 1.57 billion euros.