Pressure Is On For Turkey In New Gas Venture

The European Union is set to put the pressure on Turkey this week, in aid for stronger support of the Nabucco natural gas pipeline project for southern Europe.

EU coordinator , Jozias van Aartsen, will visit Ankara on Thursday, to meet with prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in an effort to encourage Turkey to take a stronger part in the project.

Outside sources have stated that this could be a perfect chance for Turkey to show the EU that they are pursuing stronger relations for the future.

The Nabucco plan is expected to be granted essential regulatory authorization on Monday, seeing the project one step closer to fruition. Last week one of Germany’s biggest energy providers, RWE, joined the project consortium. At this stage, however, there are still strong concerns about the Nabucco project, one of which is Turkey’s involvement.

If the project goes ahead, it will see a 3,300 km gas pipe from Azerbaijan to supply Europe and waylay the need for Russian gas supplies. The dispute regarding unpaid gas bills between Gazprom and the Ukraine heightens concerns about European dependence on Russian gas.

However there are still some within the EU that feel that putting reliance in Nabucco, is putting reliance on less dependable gas source than the current scheme with Russia.

Turkish gas provider, Botas, is already a member of the consortium, and Ankara has continuously announced its commitment to Nabucco.

The basis for concern with Turkey is that they are yet to finalize a pricing framework for Nabucco, and further to that, there have already been interruptions to gas services for Greece that go through Turkey from Iran, and strong resistance is being felt in allowing Gaz de France membership in the consortium, because of Ankara’s unspecified political reasons.

Gaz de France is already viewing other gas ventures within Europe, however the company states they are still interested in Nabucco. Projects such as South Stream, between Gasprom and the Italian company Eni, which intends to pipe gas from Russia and Bulgaria to the EU, are still contenders.

Not all Europeans see Nabucco as the only solution to the regions gas issues, and others like White Stream, a project which would involve piping Georgian gas to Ukraine and the EU under the Black Sea, are still in the offing.

Concerns are still high that even if Nabucco goes ahead, there will not be enough gas in Azerbaijan, the primary source for the opening phase of the project, for stable service. However speculation is that once the plan was given full authority to go ahead, companies would soon find more gas in the area.

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