Russian Chess On Gas Politics: Evaluation Of Turkish Stream

Abstract

Turkish Stream Pipeline Project (TSP) is the result of the altering Russian gas supply policies toward European Union (EU). Due to flustering disputes over Ukraine, initial step was planned as to bypass Ukraine with a new standalone pipeline that will transit Russian gas to Eastern Europe. However, increasing conflicts between EU and Bulgarian government made Russia take a step forward with a new standalone pipeline project, which is named as Turkish Stream.   

In the concept of Turkish Stream, Russia is planning to transport the gas through Black Sea and Turkey and sell it in the Greek border of Turkey. This means, Russia will not have to deal with the transportation of her gas inside EU’s borders. Being a self-assured seller, Russia also wishes that Balkan countries on the demanding side to provide their own gas export securities. This shift in Russia’s gas sale and/or transportation policies may be an important indicator for the future gas politic analysis of the region.

In another aspect, doability of TSP will result in facing with too many milestones such as commercial, technical, political, market, etc. All these items require careful analysis that will help coherent evaluation of Turkish Stream.

In this study, after giving the historical overview of Russian gas export to EU, which is the determiner for TSP, doability of TSP will be evaluated from the technical, commercial, marketing, political and resource aspects. In addition to this evaluation, after mentioning the main risks for successful completion of TSP, other possible options will also be evaluated for any cases of TSP that may not be successful. Having the result of this evaluation, the future of regional gas politics and Turkey’s situation will be analyzed.

Keywords

• Russian Chess On Gas Politics,Evaluation Of Turkish Stream

References

1. 1 Katja Yafimava, "Belarus: the domestic gas market and relations with Russia", 2009; accessible from http://www.gastechnews.com/ 2 Nota Di Lavaro, “Turkish Stream: What Strategy for Europe?”, 2015, 3 IHS CERA 4 European Commission 5 Wikipedia,“South Stream” accessible from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SouthStream) 6 OSW – The Centre for Eastern Studies; accessible from http://www.osw.waw.pl/ 7 Interfax, 6 December 2014 8 Russian Analytical Digest, No:163; accessible from http://www.css.ethz.ch/ 9 http://www.gazpromexport.ru/en/statistics/) 10 http://www.gazpromexport.ru/en/projects/6/) 11 http://www.gazprom.com) 12 http://www.gazpromexport.ru/en/projects/3/) 13 http://www.gazpromexport.ru/en/statistics/) 14 http://www.gazpromexport.ru/en/statistics/) 15 www.botas.gov.tr 16 EUAŞ 17 http://www.edison.it/en/itgi-pipeline