Turkey, 4 EU States Sign Gas Pipeline Deal

Nations Hope New Direct Link to Central Asia, Middle East Will Reduce Europe's Reliance on Russia

(AP)  Turkey and four European Union countries formally agreed Monday to route a new gas pipeline across their territories in an attempt to reduce Europe's reliance on Russian gas.

The Nabucco project can't entirely break Europe's dependence on Russian exports - it may in fact require supplies from Russia to fill its 31 billion cubic meters of capacity - but seeks rather to diversify the region's energy sources.

The prime ministers of Turkey, Austria, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary signed a deal to allow the pipeline to cross their countries, linking Europe to gas resources in Central Asia and the Middle East.

Iraq, Egypt and Syria all said Monday that they were ready to contribute gas, as did Turkmenistan on Friday. Azerbaijan - one of the most likely contributors - said it is giving priority to the project.

"Nabucco will provide energy security to Turkey, to South East Europe and to Central Europe. Nabucco is thus a truly European project," said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. "Turkey and the EU have tackled together a common challenge: the security and diversification of their energy supplies."

Russia provides over a quarter of Europe's gas, and 80 percent of that moves over Ukrainian pipelines. By diversifying imports and redirecting some of the Russian shipments through Nabucco, Europe could prevent a repeat of the January crisis in which all deliveries through Ukraine were suddenly cut off because of a price dispute. Still, Nabucco's impact is likely to remain small, as the volume of gas it can carry will be no more than 5 percent of Europe's consumption.

The United States, which is backing the Nabucco project alongside the EU, said it does not object to Russia's participation but argues Iran should be excluded until it improves its ties with the West. Washington said the pipeline would "help invigorate Europe" and strengthen U.S. allies.

Richard Morningstar, U.S. special envoy for Eurasian energy issues, and U.S. Senator Dick Lugar said Russia could possibly join the project.

"Russia can participate as a partner," he said. "We're trying to engage with Russia in the energy area. We don't want to see a zero-sum game."

Lugar said "we must explore how to improve confidence with Russia on energy."

However, Morningstar said Iran should be left out of the project until it improves its ties with Europe and the U.S.

"We don't believe Iran should be a participant," he said. "We have reached out to Iran. So far we have not had any positive response."

Morningstar said if Iran cooperates over its controversial nuclear program, "then one of the benefits would be for Iran to benefit from the energy sector."

The pipeline would not only make Turkey an alternative energy route between Central Asia and the Middle East to Europe but could potentially enhance Turkey's hand in overcoming EU resistance to letting it join the union.

"I believe that with the arrival of the first gas - and some experts have said this will be as early as 2014 - this agreement will open to door to a new era between the EU and Turkey," Barroso said. "Gas pipes may be made of steel, but Nabucco can cement the links between our people."

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Qatar could export liquefied natural gas to a projected facility in Turkey which can convert it and pump the gas to Europe through the Nabucco pipeline.

The 2,050-mile (3,300 kilometer) projected pipeline would run from the Caspian Sea across Turkey to Austria and involves investments of 8 billion ($10.26 billion), according to EU data.

Moscow, meanwhile, is pushing hard for new pipelines to Europe for its own gas - the so-called Nord Stream through the Baltic Sea to Germany and South Stream through Bulgaria.

[rushlimpdrug]

Will this create jobs for Americans? ?

[ibsteve2u]

It is good for a couple of reasons. For starters, it might prevent a war caused by a desperate attempt to fend off resource starvation, which is always a good thing.

Secondly, the sad thing is that all of those trillions of dollars that we sent offshore post-free trade are being used to tie up the world's available resources.

The result is that we - once the richest nation in the world on a per-capita basis - may end up being the only people who cannot afford to bid for the remnants of the planet's resources - again, on a per capita basis, because our rich are much richer than they used to be but everybody else is poorer.

Anything that keeps resources flowing to Europe helps stop bidding wars, and a pipeline is particularly useful since our banks and the hedge funds have figured out that they can buy a tanker's contents - whether LNG or oil - and park it offshore, thus creating artificial scarcity both because the contents were not unloaded and because the tanker was no longer available for future shipments.

[whowhowho1]

NO! With the abundant supply of natural gas in the United States, we are dependant on others. If you think for one second that this president and his Chicago Mafia cabinet are for American people, think again. Before the ink had dried, our chances for drilling in American off or on shore were nixed! I wonder how many people were affected by this maneuver? Jobs, they are not creating jobs, they are creating BIGGER stinking rotten government! Read it and weep!