On September 15-16, the presidents of Turkey, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan came together for the 10th summit of the Turkic speaking countries to strengthen economic ties and foster solidarity over a common cultural heritage. Within the framework of the summit, the energy ministers of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan held three-way talks on the construction of gas pipelines including the EU-backed Nabucco pipeline project and export of gas from Turkmenistan to Turkey with further routes to Europe.
The leaders of these Turkic speaking countries have been meeting regularly since 1992, when the first summit took place in Ankara under the auspices of Turkey. As a result of the 10th summit in Istanbul, the participants agreed to establish a secretariat and appointed the Turkish diplomat Halil Akinci as the first Secretary General to be located in Istanbul. The sides issued an official declaration covering 60 points, which called for enhancing the role of the Turkic speaking states regionally and internationally and also spelled out their common desire for closer cooperation in the fields of trade and economy, energy, agriculture, transport, communications and tourism.
“We are from now on one nation, but we are also six states”, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said in his opening remarks. This resonates well with Turkmenistan’s late president Niyazov’s frequent description of the common heritage and increasing bilateral partnership between Turkey and Turkmenistan as “One Nation, Two States,” itself replicated by late Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev’s use of the same terminology in an address to the Turkish parliament in 1995. Although Niyazov constantly offered Turkey natural gas at reduced prices while in power, Turkey never took the offer seriously until the EU started showing interest in importing gas from Central Asia through its proposed Nabucco pipeline project. The trilateral energy talks during the summit again brought this issue to the surface.
According to Taner Yildiz, Turkey’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Turkey is interested in purchasing gas extracted by the Malaysian company Petronas on Turkmenistan’s Caspian Sea seabed. The Minster said that a number of projects are currently underway aimed at extracting gas from non-disputed areas of the Caspian Sea. “We are confident that in coming months we will sign an agreement to support new regional projects such as Nabucco”, ITAR-TASS quoted the Turkish Minister as saying. Turkey confirmed that an official request to purchase gas from Turkmenistan has already been sent to the Ministry of Energy and Industry of Turkmenistan. It was not clear whether Turkey wants to purchase Turkmen gas for its domestic consumption or sell it on to Europe. Eurasianet.org reported that the Nabucco pipeline partner RWE AG won exploration rights last year for developing Block 23 in the Turkmen portion of the Caspian Sea and is investigating the possibilities for delivering gas directly to Europe. It is noteworthy that Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Austria signed an intergovernmental agreement on Nabucco in July 2009 in Ankara and Turkey’s request to purchase gas from Turkmenistan appears to serve this end.
The unresolved dispute among the littoral states over the demarcation of the Caspian Sea basin has delayed the consideration of the Nabucco pipeline. However, the presidents of Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan appeared optimistic about Turkey’s initiative to import gas. “We have no intention of spoiling our friendly relations with Azerbaijan”, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov said at a press conference following the summit. Commenting on the bilateral partnership, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev said, “we have high-level relations with Turkmenistan. We solve major disputes in cooperation and we should share both the natural gas and the oil”. Despite the friendly exchange of words and verbal agreement over the energy partnership, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan refused to sign an agreement on establishing and joining the Turkic Speaking Countries’ Cooperation Council established at last year’s summit.
It is noteworthy that Turkey and Azerbaijan signed a memorandum of understanding over natural gas sales and transit agreements, opening for exports of gas from the Caspian Sea basin to Europe. Speaking to the heads of the Turkic speaking countries at the summit, Aliyev called on the participants to join the regional energy transit projects. The projected 20 billion cubic meters per year (bcm/y) that Azerbaijan intends to supply to Turkey as phase two of the Shah Deniz project comes online is scheduled for 2016 only, and additional Turkmen gas could alleviate Turkey’s domestic gas deficits and provide 10 bcm of the projected 30 bcm that would constitute Nabucco’s full capacity. If the energy talks materialize further, this could provide additional supply for the Nabucco pipeline through already existing projects like the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline.
Turkmenistan’s opening for dialogue on exporting its gas to Turkey and allowing a feasibility study backed by the U.S. government in 2007 were received as positive signals internationally. It is also expected that Turkey’s interest in purchasing gas from Turkmenistan might help resolving disagreements between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan over the demarcation of the long-disputed offshore Kyapaz field (referred to as Serdar in Turkmenistan). However, critics claim that the construction of any seabed Trans-Caspian pipeline would require the consent of all five littoral states including Russia, which has already expressed objections based on “environmental concerns”.
Commenting on the feasibility of Nabucco and Turkmenistan’s participation in the project, Berdimuhammedov said that Turkmenistan is currently constructing the East-West pipeline along the Caspian coast and that Nabucco is “associated with that project”. Speaking to the Russian daily Kommersant, the EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger has earlier said that Nabucco is a priority project for the EU and that the materialization of this project would significantly alleviate the EU’s dependence on Russian gas.