Michael, you might already know this. It's very important for international stability for Russia and Turkey to get along.
Russia and Turkey to sign gas deal worth billions
Copyright c 1997 Nando.net
Copyright c 1997 Reuters
ANKARA (December 10, 1997 10:24 a.m. EST
nando.net) - Turkey will sign a landmark
multi-billion-dollar gas and pipeline agreement with Russia
next week during a rare visit of a Russian delegation led by
Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.
"The gas agreement will be at the centre of the talks with
Chernomyrdin," a Turkish foreign ministry official, who
asked not to be identified, said on Wednesday.
"The talks will also dwell on issues related to the Caucasus
and other bilateral matters," he told Reuters.
Chernomyrdin, who Russian officials have said will seek to
improve neglected economic and political ties between the
two countries, will come to Turkey on Dec. 14 and will
leave on Dec. 16.
He will sign the gas agreement with Turkish Prime Minister
Mesut Yilmaz at a ceremony on Monday.
Under the deal, Turkey, in urgent need of gas and other
energy sources, will buy an initial three billion cubic metres
of gas (BCM) a year from Gazprom, the world's largest gas
company, from 2000 through a pipeline to be built from
Russia to Turkey under the Black Sea.
The project, called "Blue Stream," envisages a 750-mile
pipeline from the Russian compression station Izobilnoye, 63
miles east of Krasnodar, to Ankara through an undersea
connection to Samsun on the Turkish coast.
Gas supplies through the pipeline, to cost up to $3.3 billion,
will eventually reach 16 BCM per year when the project
comes on full steam by 2010.
The agreement covers a 25-year gas and pipeline contract
signed between Gazprom and Turkey's pipeline concern
Botas in April. At the time officials said it would begin from
1998 and was valued at about $13.5 billion.
The Gazprom contract calls for Turkey to raise gas
purchases to eight bcm from 1998 from an existing pipeline
passing through Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria, and to 14
BCM eventually by 2000.
Turkish energy ministry officials said the cost of gas to be
bought through the Black Sea pipeline would be less than
that via the existing western pipeline, which has carried
about six BCM annually since 1987 through Ukraine,
Romania and Bulgaria.
(snip)
The energy ministry official said the talks might also touch on
a plan to build a pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey's
southern oil terminal of Ceyhan to export output from a
multi-billion-dollar project developing Caspian oilfieds.
Turkey opposes a Russian plan that all crude oil from the
project, estimated to reach 700,000 barrels per day by
2010, should be transported to the West through the Black
Sea and Turkey's busy Bosphorus straits.
Relations between Moscow and NATO-member Turkey
have often been strained in the past, most recently over
Ankara's sympathetic stance towards Russia's breakaway
Chechnya region. |
