Turkish officials held talks with oil companies Thursday on ways to reduce growing tanker traffic through the Turkish Straits and lessen the risks posed by congestion in the two waterways.
Turkish officials held talks with oil companies Thursday on ways to
reduce growing tanker traffic through the Turkish Straits and lessen the risks
posed by congestion in the two waterways.
Turkey
has
long voiced alarm over the environmental and safety threats that maritime
traffic, especially oil tankers, pose to the
Dardanelles
and
the
Bosporus
, at either end of the
Marmara
Sea
that
links the
Black Sea
to the
Mediterranean
.
Turkey
's
Environment Minister Veysel Eroglu said after the talks that 51,424 ships, most
of them oil tankers, had passed through the
Bosporus
Strait
,
which bisects
Turkey
's
biggest city
Istanbul
, in
2009 alone.
"That is four times more than the Straits of Panama and three times more
than the
Suez Canal
," Eroglu told a press conference.
"Clearly, the [Turkish] Straits can no longer bear any increase in cargo
ships and tankers. The risk of accidents, environmental accidents, are
obvious."
During the meeting, Turkish officials presented alternative land routes to ship
oil to the companies present, among them BP PLC (BP), Chevron Corp. (CVX), ENI
SpA (E), ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM), Shell Dutch PLC (RDSA), Total SA (TOT) and
Transneft (TRNFP.RS).
Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said two planned pipeline projects--one
linking
Samsun
on
Turkey
's
Black
Sea
coast to the
port
of
Ceyhan
on
the
Mediterranean
, and another linking Burgas in
Bulgaria
to
Alexandroupolis in
Greece
--could
well absorb 50 million metric tons of oil a year.
That would equal to one third of the oil volume passing through the Straits, he
underlined.
He estimated that it would take "three of four years" to build the
planned pipelines.
The talks however didn't touch upon the creation of a fund to cover the cost of
a possible disaster, initially proposed by
Ankara
,
Yildiz said.
"The most important thing is that we agreed with the companies on the
existence of the problem...We have initiated a process," he added.
The two straits constitute the main naval route for Ukrainian and Russian
vessels to reach the rest of the world.
The
Bosporus
Strait
, the
fourth busiest waterway in the world, is particularly difficult to navigate
because of its sinuous geography and treacherous currents as well as constant
ferry traffic carrying the city's inhabitants between the waterway's western
and eastern shore.
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