Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used the talks with the presidents of Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan on Wednesday to revive and back the idea of bringing Turkmen natural gas to Europe via his country.
The new natural gas pipeline would be linking up with energy-rich Turkmenistan and could potentially ease Europe’s dependence on Russian energy following the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Another idea that Erdogan has been floating is to carry the gas on ships to Azerbaijan and then pump it into the pipelines chain connecting Azerbaijan with Europe via Georgia and Turkey- the Southern Gas Corridor.
Erdogan met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Turkmen leader Serdar Berdimuhamedov for a three-day summit in the isolated Central Asian state’s western city of Awaza to further deepen cooperation between the three countries in trade, energy, and transportation, among other areas.
Compared to Azerbaijan, from where the EU already imports gas and that ranks 25th on the list of the world’s richest countries in gas reserves, Turkmenistan is ranking 6th after Russia, Iran, Qatar, the United States, and Saudi Arabia.
Previously, much of Turkmenistan’s gas volumes have used pipelines running to Russia to reach world markets but the country is now looking for ways to access other markets via Turkey and it has also been ramping up supplies to China.
The new project could now link Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan via the Caspian Sea to an existing pipeline running from Turkey to Azerbaijan.
As Erdogan noted in remarks released by his office, transporting Turkmen natural gas to Western markets can and should be done via the existing corridor he described as the backbone of the Trans-Anatolian natural gas pipeline.
The Turkish President, however, also backs Russian President Vladimir Putin’s idea to bypass the existing pipelines running through Ukraine and under the Baltic Sea to supply clients in Europe by creating a new gas hub in Turkey, which feeds Erdogan’s dream of using his country’s location to turn it into one of the world’s main energy trade centers.
He’s also trying to take on the middleman’s role in the Ukraine conflict by maintaining close working relations with Moscow while supplying Kyiv with arms.
