Turkey to be mediator in Gazprom's struggle for South European natural gas

Stressing that Turkish and Russian officials will discuss the conditions of export of Russian natural gas to Turkey (during the meeting of Russian-Turkish Joint Commission of Commercial & Economic Cooperation in Istanbul), the Russian Vremya Novostey newspaper wrote that Azerbaijani natural gas is another alternative for Turkey.

However, Ankara wants to be a "door" to South European natural gas market, wrote Vremya Novostey which added that also Iran and Egypt can export natural gas via Turkey through Egypt-Jordan-Syria-Turkey natural gas pipeline.

In 2005, Turkish BOTAS (Petroleum Pipeline Corp.) bought 18 billion cubic meters of natural gas (5 billion from Russia-Blue Stream, 4.5 billion from Iran, and the remaining from Algeria and Nigeria), noted the newspaper. It added that Azerbaijan will start to operate Shah Sea facilities by the end of 2006, and BOTAS will buy 2 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Azerbaijan till the end of 2006. This amount will rise to 6.6 billion cubic meters as of 2007.

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