ANKARA’S NABUCCO POLICY ANGERS SOME
By Lale Sariibrahimoglu
Today’s Zaman, Turkey
May 22 2007
Some European energy experts believe that Russia’s latest deals with
Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan — which could jeopardize Turkey’s policy
of becoming an energy route for Caspian oil and gas, bypassing the
strategic and busy Bosporus and Dardanelles straits — should be seen
as a serious blow both to Turkey and the EU’s aspirations to reduce
reliance on Russian gas and energy. The renewed risks of Russia’s
increased dominance in the Caspian region first surfaced when Russian
President Vladimir Putin signed an agreement with Bulgaria and Greece
in March for building the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline to carry
Russian oil.
Then came the news from Turkmenistan early last week that Putin and
the region’s main energy producers, Turkmenistan’s President Gurbangul
Berdymukhamedov and Kazakhstan’s Nursultan Nazarbayev, shook hands to
build a pipeline along the Caspian Sea coast to ship Turkmen natural
gas to Western markets via Kazakhstan and Russia.
A few days before, Nazarbayev said at a May 10 meeting in the Kazakh
capital of Astana with Russian President Putin, that 17 million tons
of Kazakh oil might be used in the Burgas-Alexandroupolis project,
the Russian Itar Tass news agency reported.
All this news obviously represented a blow to both US and European
efforts to secure alternatives to Middle East oil and gas that are
intended to be independent from Russian influence, such as US-backed
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which has started carrying oil
to the European markets via Turkey’s Ceyhan port in the south.
It may be true that the two deals are also expected to reduce
Kazakhstan’s interest in routes connecting with the BTC pipeline.
Russia’s deals with Turkmenistan, in particular, also have the
potential to affect the Nabucco natural gas pipeline project, which
will transport natural gas from Turkey to Austria, via Bulgaria,
Romania, and Hungary as it is intended to reduce Europe’s dependence
on Russian gas.
Western diplomatic sources recall that Nabucco has the capacity to
meet around only 10 percent of the gas needs of Europe, but politically
it is an important project as it is intended to bypass Russian gas.
But according to the same sources, Turkey’s slowness in making a
decision contributed to the prevention of Nabucco partners from
signing a deal to secure the supply contract.
"The Nabucco project, of course, is not finished simply because Russia
made these latest deals. But we [Nabucco] partners could have proved
to the Azeris and Turkmens that the project is going to be a reality
soon with the signing of the supply contracts. But Turkey has been
taking it too slow," claimed one Western source.
The same source recalled that delays in decisions prompted supplier
countries such as Turkmenistan to look for other routes to transport
its gas.
It is worth remembering here that Turkey’s slowness in taking quick
action prevented the realization of the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline
project in the past that was intended to carry Turkmen gas via Turkey
to European markets.
Though Iranian gas is also important for the Nabucco project, the
initial supply contracts for Nabucco should have been signed with
both Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.
Turkey’s attempts to use its political influence, among other things,
on pricing the gas also makes the other Nabucco partners nervous.
Turkey has to follow EU norms under which it cannot block any country,
and Nabucco needs a liberalized gas export as well as a liberalized
transit routes, according to Western energy experts.
For example, Turkey’s suspension of talks with Gaz de France recently
over Nabucco in reaction to a French bill on the condemnation of the
so-called genocide of the Armenians during Ottoman rule, making denial
of the genocide a crime, angered other pipeline project partners.
Some partners stressed that the secure supply of gas via the pipeline
should be free of political influence and that Turkey should not
use politics in this project. The four other countries involved in
the project, Bulgaria, Romania, Austria and Hungary, have already
approved partnership with Gaz de France in the project, which will
transmit Caspian and Iranian gas to Western Europe, bypassing Russia.
It is also true that independent from Turkey, the project faces a
series of problems, including financing, possible steel bottlenecks
and pending EU permits for the pipeline. If construction of the
3,300-kilometer-long pipeline starts in 2008, it could begin operating
in 2011. The 4.6 billion euro ($6.14 billion) project could transport
25.5 to 31 billion cubic meters of Caspian gas to Europe annually
by 2020.
Turkey’s attempts to use politics in the Nabucco gas pipeline project
may be a hurdle in furthering the project, but the main reason behind
the project’s slowness is the US’s reservations toward Iran, which
has lately been involved in a serious standoff with the West over
its uranium enrichment program to acquire a nuclear bomb, according
to many.
But at the end of the day Ankara should avoid pursuing narrow
approaches to some of its policies that also affect its economic
interests.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
