Russian Chess On Gas Politics: Evaluation Of Turkish Stream

Year 2016, Issue: 1, 108 - 124, 30.01.2016

Oğuzhan Akyener Çağrı Şirin

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 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