Analysts: Moscow Opposed To Including Turkmenistan Gas In Southern Corridor

Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev flies to Italy today to discuss trade and economic relations between the two countries. Experts believe Silvio Berlusconi could ask for clarification on the issue of gas supplies from Turkmenistan to Europe, Oil and Gas Information Agency reports. Moscow is dissatisfied with Rome's idea to include Turkmenistan in the Southern Corridor project, the general director of the National Foundation for Energy Security, Konstantin Simonov, said in an interview with RBK-TV.
"South Stream justifies its hot name from time to time by exacerbating conflict between the main partners in the project, Russia's Gazprom and Italy's Eni. The stumbling block is trivial - money. The pipeline to Europe has two prices tags, and this is no coincidence: 8.5 billion euros and 20 billion euros. The first figure represents the cost of the pipeline to the European border, while the second is the price of the entire works, including sales networks across almost all of Eastern Europe and Austria, RBK reports.
"Of course, Eni would like to participate in all of that. And it's easy to understand why. And not just from a commercial point of view, although that is important, but for political reasons too - so that the European Union retains the priority in all energy projects on its territory", oil and gas market analyst Rustam Tankayev said.
Moscow was especially non-plussed with Eni's idea to merge south Stream with the competing Nabucco project. Experts believe this idea came about because the Nabucco project is impossible to carry out as is, since there nothing to fill it with. The European Union doe not want to work with Iran due to Teheran's nuclear program. And the Chinese will keep Turkmenistan gas out of Europe.
"They [the Chinese] have invested lots of money into Turkmenistan's gas industry and categorically interested in all the gas going to China", Tankayev said adding, "Iran's position needs no comment. They do not want Turkmenistan gas to compete with Iranian gas".
Therefore, Italy has made a detour through the Caucasus. A few days ago, the Italians offered Azerbaijan to take part in shipping 8 billion cubic meters of gas from Turkmenistan to Europe. "The idea of shipping liquified gas theoretically makes it possible to include Turkmenistan in the southern gas corridor, and this is something Russia does not find suitable. so far, from the technical point of view, this idea is controversial", Simonov said.
Copyright 2010, Oil and Gas Information Agency. All rights reserved.

Back