Turkey and Iran Fuel Europe's Energy Hopes

A deal signed by Iran and Turkey which could make it possible to transport Turkmen gas to Europe without going through Russia may be thwarted by the United States and Russia, say NBCentralAsia analysts.



On July 13, Turkey and Iran signed a protocol agreement to develop three gas wells on the South Pars shelf off the southwest coast of Iran. The two countries also agreed to export 30 billion cubic metres of natural gas – some of it Turkmen – to Europe every year.



The agreements come at a time when Ankara and Ashgabat are discussing the export routes by which Turkmen gas might travel through Iran.



After Russia, Iran is the largest consumer of Turkmen gas, which it gets via the eight billion cu m a year capacity Korpeje-Kurt-Kui pipeline. This gas comes from Nebitdag in southwestern Turkmenistan.



Turkey is keen to see this route extended so that it can earn transit fees from onward exports and also buy gas for its domestic needs.



A Turkmenistan-Iran-Turkey pipeline would partially resolve Europe’s fears of over-dependence on Russia as an energy source and transit route. It would link up to the 31 billion cu m capacity Nabucco pipeline, construction of which is due to begin next year. When completed in 2011, this pipeline will take gas from Turkey to Austria via Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary.



It was previously assumed that the Nabucco route was contingent on completion of the Transcaspian Gas Pipeline, TGP, which will run from Central Asia to Azerbaijan under the Caspian Sea. If it came off, the alternative route could do away with the need for the costly and technically difficult TGP project altogether.



However, NBCentralAsia political analysts warn that the Turkmenistan-Iran-Turkey pipeline could be blocked on two fronts – United States-led sanctions against Iran, and Russia’s desire to maintain a monopoly over Central Asian gas.



The US Congress is currently reviewing legislation which would impose sanctions against any company investing more than 20 million US dollars in the Iranian gas and oil industry, as a response to Tehran’s continuing refusal to halt its nuclear programme.



In 1993, a similar pipeline project designed by Iran and Turkey was thwarted by US-initiated sanctions against Iran.



“The United States will try to prevent this [new] project from going ahead,” said Askar Nursha, an analyst at the Kazak Institute for Strategic Studies.



Rovshan Ibrahimov, an international relations specialist at Baku’s Qafqaz University, warns that Iran and Turkmenistan do not have enough spare gas to feed the Nabucco pipeline. Turkmenistan has not yet given guaranteed supplies of gas to Iran and Turkey.



In addition, further economic sanctions against Iran would make it very difficult to find the funding for more pipelines, while Moscow is likely to Russia react badly to rival options for exporting Turkmen gas.



Ilyas Korsakov, an expert with the Alternativa think tank in Kazakstan, thinks it is too early to say whether construction of the Nabucco route will go ahead, given that funding for it has not been secured in Turkmenistan, there are no prospective foreign investors, and no feasibility study has been done for a project that some estimates say would cost over 6.3 billion dollars.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)