Interview – Turkey’s Botas hopes to carry 15% of Europe’s gas demand by 2030

SeeNews, April 6, 2007 Friday

By Vladimir Petrov, Sofia (Bulgaria)

Turkey’s oil and gas pipeline operator Botas hopes to transit at least 15% of Europe’s natural gas demand through two key pipelines on its territory by 2030, a senior company official said.

Botas’ forecast is in line with plans by the European Union to lower its dependence on Russian energy supplies, which accounted for 44% of the natural gas and 18% of the crude oil imported by the 25 EU member states last year. Bulgaria and Romania joined the bloc in January as the 26th and 27th members.

« We are planning that […] through Turkey 15% of the European gas demand may be recovered with those two [pipeline] projects – Nabucco and Turkey-Greece, » Botas’ foreign relations director, Ismail Capanoglu, told SeeNews recently on the sidelines of an international energy conference held in the Croatian capital of Zagreb.

The construction of Nabucco, a 3,300-kilometre pipeline aimed to supply EU with Azeri and Iranian gas, is expected to start in 2008. The five partners in the project – Botas, Austrian OMV, Hungary’s MOL, Bulgaria’s Bulgargaz and Romania’s Transgaz expect that the pipeline would reach capacity of 31 billion cubic metres in 2017 and transit around 10% of Europe’s gas demand.

The Turkey-Greece gas pipeline, which is expected to be completed in June, with plans to be extended to Italy at a later stage, has been designed to carry 12 billion cubic metres of Azeri gas per year.

Botas believes it could arrange the supply of 100 billion cubic metres of gas to Europe by 2030.

« […] if European countries try to diversify their sources, then we are planning that 100 billion cubic meters of gas may pass through Turkey to Europe through Nabucco and Turkey-Greece-Italy projects, » Capanoglu said.

For Botas Egypt, Iraq and the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are potential sources of natural gas supplies to be fed into the Nabucco and Turkey-Greece-Italy pipelines, he added.

The European Commission has said its trans-European energy network policy aims to add up to 100 billion cubic meters of gas import capacity by 2013, split equally between pipeline and liquefied natural gas, in order to secure and diversify gas supplies from Russia, the Caspian region, North Africa and the Middle East.

The gas projects include the North European gas pipeline (linking Russia directly to Germany), the Galsi pipeline linking Algeria via Sardinia and Corsica to Italy, with a branch to France, the IGI pipeline from Turkey through Greece to Italy, the Nabucco pipeline from Turkey to Austria and the Greenstream pipeline from Libya to Italy.

« By developing these two projects we are trying to introduce Europe to a number of new market players and sources, » said Capanoglu.