TURKEY, ARMENIA SIGN SYMBOLIC POWER SUPPLY AGREEMENT
by Andrew Neff
World Markets Research Centre
Global Insight
September 11, 2008
Armenian Energy Minister Armen Moysisian said yesterday that Armenia
and Turkey had signed an electricity supply deal during Turkish
president Abdullah Gul’s historic visit last weekend to Yerevan, the
capital of Armenia. Moysisian told reporters that the deal, signed
between Armenia’s state-owned High Voltage Electricity Network and a
privately owned Turkish firm called UNIT, will see electricity supplied
by Armenia’s thermal power plants to eastern Turkey, beginning next
year. Moysisian said that the agreement, the first tangible sign of a
thaw in frosty relations between the Turkish and Armenian governments,
would see Armenia supply 1.5 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of power
initially, with volumes eventually rising to 3.5 billion kWh.
Significance:Gul’s visit to Armenia over the weekend to watch a
Turkey-Armenia World Cup football qualifying match marked the first
visit of a Turkish leader to Armenia in the post-Soviet period. The
two neighbours have no diplomatic relations, as they have fought
a rhetorical war over Armenia’s international efforts to secure
recognition of the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman
Empire at the end of the First World War as genocide, a charge the
Turkish government disputes. Armenia formerly supplied power to
Turkey during the Soviet period, and the Armenian and Turkish power
grids operate in parallel, so theoretically all that is needed for
Armenia to export power to eastern Turkey is for their national grids
to be reconnected. However, transmission lines must be repaired,
and Moysisian said that a new transformer in Turkey would need to be
installed, a process which would take up to five months. Although the
power supply deal between the two countries represents a small volume
of electricity, the deal clearly holds strong symbolic importance.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
