Bloomberg: Putin’s Turkey Gas Pipe Will Meet Rising Demand as EU Stagnates

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan to replace the South Stream natural gas pipeline to Europe with a link to Turkey would meet rising demand in the nation as the European market stagnates, according to EON AG.

The project would be a real “game changer” and also allow Russia to cut its gas transit via Ukraine by at least a third, Uwe Fip, a senior vice president at EON Global Commodities, said yesterday at the Frankfurt Gas Forum.

Turkey’s energy consumption is set to almost double over the next decade as European gas demand remains flat through 2019, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the International Energy Agency. Putin on Dec. 1 ditched a plan to build the $45 billion South Stream pipeline to Europe, citing resistance from the European Union, and instead proposed to supply the same amount of gas into Turkey.

The proposed pipeline is a “win-win partnership for both Russia and Turkey” with Russia winning from a political point of view and Turkey getting price benefits, Gulmira Rzayeva, a senior research fellow at the Center for Strategic Studies Under the President of Azerbaijan, said at the conference.  MORE