The document will open the door to the construction of an artery that will allow bypassing the Black and Aegean straits located on the Turkish territory, for the first time in the economic history of Russia and many other countries. Transit revenues of Bulgaria and Greece within that project have been evaluated at upwards of $100 mln annually.
At the same time, plans are afoot to build a Bulgarian-Macedonian leg of the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum-Ceyhan oil pipeline. It will begin near Turkish capital, Ankara, and head towards Bulgaria across the Central and Istanbul regions of Turkey. The pipeline is later to be prolonged to Italy via Albania, across the Adriatic Sea. This will make Bulgaria the “zero zone” of new Eurasian pipelines.
Russia and Turkey are negotiating the construction of an oil pipeline from Samsun to Ceyhan, which will cross Turkey from the Black Sea in the North to the Mediterranean in the South. It will also bypass the straits, and Turkey intends to offer tariff, transit and other privileges to its users.
The Russian-Turkish project is an apparent rival of the Bulgarian-Greek pipeline, and so Sofia and Athens have been devising argument in favour of giving priority to the Russian-Bulgarian-Greek oil transit project. Many Bulgarian and Greek political analysts fear that Russian business, if offered better terms, might neglect the Bulgarian-Greek pipeline, diverting its attention to the project running across Turkey.
Russian political analyst Oleg Veremeyev said: “The point at issue is the financial terms of the construction and oil transit through the pipelines that are being built. Bulgaria and Turkey will strengthen their energy transit positions, whereas exporting countries will no longer depend on one or two transit routes.
According to President Vladimir Putin, the Russian leadership is inclined to choose the Bulgarian-Greek pipeline, from which an offshoot is to be built to Macedonia and Serbia with access to the Montenegrin part of the Adriatic Sea, which will benefit all participants in that comprehensive project.” Russia’s losses from limitations put on the throughput capacity of Turkish straits have exceeded $1.2 bln since 1995, which is a solid impetus for building bypass routes. If Russia helps in the additional exploration and subsequent development of oil and gas resources in the Greek part of the Aegean basin, Greece will most likely become a highspeed locomotive for the Burgas-Alexandroupolis project.
Many Russian and Greek experts believe that in its relations with Greece, Russia should rely primarily on assistance to developing its oil and gas reserves, not on increasing oil and gas deliveries.
In other words, Greece will gradually become self-sufficient in oil and gas, which has long been a key economic goal in Athens. In addition, Athens will become a reliable oil transit partner of Russia and Bulgaria, which will also benefit Bulgarian-Greek relations. A relevant example is the involvement of Greece in a project to deliver Russian gas to Italy along a planned offshoot from the North European Nord Stream via the European (Istanbul) regions of Turkey.
One way or another, Russia will stand to gain from the construction of these gas pipelines.
