Bloomberg: Putin Plan to Ship Gas to Europe Via Turkey Seen as Unrealistic

When President Vladimir Putin said last week he was ditching a $45 billion pipeline to Europe under the Black Sea, he put forward a Plan B. Russia would build a pipe to Turkey and then ship it overland to Greece and on to the rest of the continent.

It’s an idea seen as having little more chance of succeeding than the original Plan A. “It’s only show business,” said Necdet Pamir, an energy specialist at Bilkent University in Ankara. A huge gas network from Russia to Turkey to supply European Union markets is unrealistic, he said in a telephone interview.

All the things that combined to block the South Stream project to take gas under the Black Sea to Bulgaria are likely to undermine the Turkey-Greece plan. Stagnant gas demand in Europe makes the economics unattractive, the EU’s in no mood for deals with Russia as the Ukraine crisis drags on, and the region is looking to import gas from other parts of the world.
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