Turkey is hoping to become an alternative route for Europe’s energy imports – but its ambitions face tough practical and political challenges.
Turkey is pushing plans for a pipeline that would bypass both Russia and Ukraine in a bid to strengthen its role as an energy crossroads between Central Asia and the Middle East to Europe.
The 2,050-mile (3,300-kilometer) projected Nabucco pipeline is backed by the European Union and the United States and would run from the Caspian Sea across Turkey to Austria.
Construction is scheduled to start next year with hopes for completion by 2013.
The project is fraught with complications but the EU sees it as crucial to breaking its dependence on Russian energy, potentially enhancing Turkey’s hand in overcoming stiff EU resistance to letting it into the elite club of nations.
“The Southern Corridor is one of the cornerstones of our diversification policies,” EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs wrote in his blog recently. “We all have the need to open a real corridor to make it attractive for Central Asian countries to pipe their gas to the West, to Turkey and to the European market.”
Piebalgs said, “Even if the volumes of gas that we can receive from this area are limited, in the best case no more than 5 percent of Europe’s consumption, the project has huge importance because it will open the door to a region, the Caspian Sea, that has the largest gas reserves in the world.”
Although Europe will most likely remain to some extent dependent upon Russian supplies, the project would alleviate problems such as the sudden shutoff in deliveries witnessed this month. Russia provides over a quarter of Europe’s gas, and 80 percent of that moves over Ukraine’s pipelines.
“God willing, we won’t allow our people to freeze,” Turkey’s Energy Minister Hilmi Guler said. “It is for this reason we want to start Nabucco; it could become a key artery to Europe.”
Christian Dolezal, a spokesman for the Nabucco project, said Europe will require more gas in coming years. “Turkey, with its important strategic position, will become an energy hub if Nabucco is realized and this would be a win-win situation for Europe and Turkey,” Dolezal said.
Meanwhile, it was reported yesterday that ministers from the six countries participating in the EU-backed Nabucco gas pipeline project are to meet in Budapest on January 26-27, the project’s spokesman said.
The summit, proposed by the Hungarian government last September, will bring together ministers or possibly heads of government from Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Romania and Turkey, Nabucco’s Dolezal told AFP.
The pipeline currently has six shareholders – OMV of Austria, MOL of Hungary, Transgaz of Romania, Bulgargaz of Bulgaria, Botas of Turkey and RWE of Germany.
But the project has so far proved slow-moving, with the necessary approvals and agreements between the countries concerned still to be signed.
“Turkey and European countries are late for this job,” said Tacidar Seyhan, a member of the energy commission of Turkey’s parliament.
Moscow, meanwhile, is also pushing hard for alternative pipelines to Europe for its own gas – the Nord Stream through the Baltic Sea to Germany and South Stream through Bulgaria.
“If both Nord Stream and South Stream are constructed, Nabucco will likely not be. Russia’s dominant market position will be preserved and enhanced,” said Zeyno Baran, director of the Center for Eurasian Policy at the Hudson Institute.
(KATHIMERINI, 01/13/2009)