Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan have discussed the Turkish Stream project in Antalya on the sidelines of the G20 summit. The sides agreed to continue developing the issue after forming Turkey’s new Cabinet of Ministers, Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak said.
Commenting the date of signing the intergovernmental agreement on the Turkish Stream project, the minister noted that during the meeting, the presidents discussed more "general, conceptual issues".
"Everyone understands that the sooner the better," RIA Novosti cited Novak as saying.
The signing of the agreement on the Turkish Stream will depend on how fast it will take to agree on the text, it is not a time consuming process, but it is unlikely to be signed in December 2015, Russia’s Energy Minister said.
The Deputy Director of the Institute of Energy Strategy, Alexey Belogoriev, told Vestnik Kavkaza that the summit was necessary in order to ensure the construction of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline. "The fact is that Turkey is still not too interested in the realization of this project in its current form - it is quite satisfied with the supply routes of the Blue Stream and the Trans-Balkan Corridor. Ankara does not see any economic benefit, that is, it does not see the need to change the current scheme of gas supply," the expert noted.
"Ankara was interested in the project when Russia hoped that European consumers would be supplied through this pipeline, both the Balkan countries and the EU. In this case, Turkey wanted to be a fully-fledged partner, not just a transit country for Russian gas. It turned out that Ankara offered too much to Gazprom. In the end, it turned out that Gazprom is not interested in Turkey's option, and Turkey is not satisfied with the option that Gazprom announced in October," Alexey Belogoriev said.
A senior analyst of 'Uralsib Capital', Alexei Kokin, in his turn, said that the most important issues will be resolved already after the meeting of the presidents. "It's about the volume and speed of the project, which are to be agreed by Gazprom and BOTAS. It is necessary to determine the capacity of the pipeline and the purchase price of gas by Turkey, as well as possible conditions of gas transit through Turkey, if a part of the supply will go into the European Union," he said.
Kokin disagreed with Belogorev about the interests of Turkey. "I think they are interested in the realization of a certain minimum version of a project to build the first thread and possibly a second, which would provide 16 billion cubic meters of gas per year. Bypassing Ukraine, this route will provide almost one hundred percent reliability of the transit in the future. Turkey is interested in this project just for the sake of improving the reliability of supply. But it is fairly indifferent to the idea of deliveries of 64 billion cubic meters of gas per year," the expert concluded.
