Italy Threatens To Throw Spanner Inwards European Option To Russian Gas

From OilPrice:

A Storm Is Brewing In The Southern Gas Corridor

No fewer than Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko as well as Turkish Cypriot President Mustafa Akinci attended a gathering inwards Central Turkey on 12 June. The sum as well as multifariousness of attendees of this coming together discover a mutual involvement inwards ane champaign of geopolitical developments: position out energy as well as to a greater extent than specifically natural gas.

The opening ceremony of the 1.850 kilometers long Trans Anatolian Pipeline, TANAP, starting at the Shah Deniz gas champaign inwards Republic of Azerbaijan as well as ending inwards Turkey, is the terminal footstep earlier connecting to the European grid inwards Hellenic Republic as well as Italy. TANAP is business office of the Southern Gas Corridor, which was the dream of many European leaders as well as officials to practise an option to Russian gas.

The attendance of several high-level dignitaries shows the involvement inwards the pipeline as well as the geopolitical developments of the region. More specifically, Russia’s dominant seat inwards the natural gas marketplace of southeast Europe has laid leaders scrambling to notice alternatives or at to the lowest degree contest of producers.

The fraught relations betwixt Russian Federation as well as Ukraine brought these countries on a collision course. However, due to historical reasons the position out energy industries of Moscow as well as Kiev select been closely intertwined. Russian Federation has laid itself an ambitious destination of circumventing Ukraine equally its primary transit dry soil for gas exports. The Turk Stream as well as Nord Stream two pipelines, which are either planned or nether construction, volition acquit much of the needed gas to Europe starting inwards 2019 when a novel transit contract has to hold upward signed alongside Kiev.

Ukraine intends to diversify away from as well as ultimately halt buying gas from Russia. The Southern Gas Corridor, therefore, is a highly anticipated alternative. The help of Petro Poroshenko at the opening ceremony is a will to this goal. Already Ukraine importing gas from neighbouring European countries alongside plans to growth domestic production of natural gas.

The election of a novel authorities inwards Italy has brought alter to the strategic position out energy map, which for a decade seemed to hold upward fixed. The €40 billion Southern Gas Corridor pipeline bringing Azeri gas to Europe was intended to hold upward linked to Italy’s past times a yet-to-be-built Trans Adriatic Pipeline, TAP....MORE

HT to as well as headline from Naked Capitalism.