Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan held talks behind closed doors during the weekend in Baku, discussing the construction of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline and the Akkuyu nuclear power plant, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said. The two leaders attended the opening ceremony of the first European Games in Azerbaijan.
But Alexei Kokin, a senior oil and gas analyst atUralSibFinancial Corp in Moscow, told New Europeby phone on June 15 that Turkey is not committed to any particular project with Russia at this point.
Erdogan, whowas reportedly upset when Putin made him wait for several minutes for the meeting in Baku, also informed his Russian counterpart onthe political situation inTurkey and perspectives offorming a new government followingthe recent general election.
Kokin reminded that months before the election, “senior members of the Erdogan party warned Russia that it was too early to sign anything”. He added that any final deals had to wait until after the election. “There’s a general desire to have something built but how exactly and where exactly remains to be seen,” Kokin said.
The Russian delegation included Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Energy Minister Alexander Novak, Russian gas monopoly Gazprom CEO Aleksey Miller, and nuclear monopoly Rosatom head Sergey Kirienko.
In December 2014, citing opposition from the EU, Russia announced the scrapping of the South Stream gas pipeline project that would have bypassed the current routes via Ukraine. Moscow presented the Turkish Stream – a new 1,100-kilometre transportation route will be laid out under the Black Sea from Russia to Turkey.
The Turkish Stream will consist of four lines with a capacity of up to 63 billion cubic metres of gas per year. Some 16 billion will be reserved for Turkey; the rest will be delivered to the Turkish-Greek border. Further plans call for a pipeline through Greece, FYROM, Serbia and Hungary.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is expected to meet with Putin at the annual St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF-2015) scheduled for June 18-20.
Kokin said Turkish Stream will probably be discussed during the forum although it may not be the central issue. “What’s important for Gazprom is not merely having Greece on its side but having a number of European gas distributors interested in acting as buyers of the gas promised by Gazprom because basically the position of Greece is not enviable. Within the EU it doesn’t have much influence. It can’t really force the EU to accept this project. It’s a necessary part basically of this project, it’s not sufficient,” Kokin said.
The UralSib analyst said Gazprom is seeking alliances in Europe. “Gazprom has a pretty good understanding that is going to be very hard to market its gas outside of Turkey, basically selling it in Europe will be rather problematic. Gazprom will have to find allies possibly on both sides, possibly a supplier that would also be allowed to use that pipeline so that it wouldn’t be just Gazprom and also maybe more than one distributor so we’ll see how it goes,” Kokin told New Europe.
Azerbaijan holds sizable reserves of natural gas and European leaders are waiting to tap into its offshoreShah Denizin an effort to break Russia’s grip on the energy sector.
Russian meets about a quarter of Europe’s natural gas needs, though most of that runs that the Soviet-era pipeline network in Ukraine.
Kokin also reminded that Erdogan also met the Azerbaijani leaders during the European Games in Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev has met with Erdogan, noting the successful development of the friendly and brotherly relations between the two countries, which are based on strategic partnership, in economic, energy, transportation and other areas. The sides expressed their confidence that the bilateral ties would further expand.
http://www.neurope.eu/article/the-baku-move-putin-erdogan-plot-turkish-stream-nuke-plans/