What Did Turkey Lose When EU Lost Nabucco?
Turkey has lost an opportunity to redefine the implicit rules of the energy sector for itself and other transit countries.
Last week, the BP-led Shah Deniz consortium rejected the Nabucco gas pipeline project’s offer to deliver Caspian gas to Europe and Turkey. The European Commission (EC) supported Nabucco as a symbol of consumer and transit country outrage toward the dominance by a few suppliers of the natural-gas market. When the EC lost Nabucco, Turkey lost its chance to show the decisiveness of transit countries in the energy market.
On June 28, the Shah Deniz Consortium, which holds the license to exploit Azerbaijan’s 16 billion cubic meters per year gas reserves, announced it had selected the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) to bring Azeri gas from the Turkish border via Greece and Albania to Italy. Swiss Axpo (42.5%), Norwegian Statoil (42.5%) and German EON (15%) each hold shares in TAP without any involvement from transit countries such as Albania, Greece or Italy.
Turkey’s BOTAS, which holds 16.5% of shares in Nabucco, was not involved in any stage of TAP. But according to the consortium's decisions from earlier this year, TAP would join the Trans-Anatolian gas pipeline (TANAP), jointly held by Azerbaijan (80%) and Turkey (20%) to deliver Azeri gas to Bulgaria via Turkey.
In the last ten years, this TANAP/TAP pipeline formula gradually took the place of Nabucco, thanks to its effectiveness, flexibility and low cost. From the Turkish perspective, when one compares Turkey’s 20% in TANAP with its 16.5% in Nabucco, one might draw the conclusion that Ankara raised its share in the game. But this will slightly change when one considers the political dimensions of Turkey’s involvement in Nabucco.
