Too many questions in Nabucco project

Since Energy Minister Hilmi Güler said farewell to the office after a Cabinet change, energy experts I got in touch with said the Nabucco project was about to be shelved. However, that did not happen and the conclusion document of the energy summit held in the Czech capital of Prague has proved that the project came back to life. The European Union, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Egypt signed the agreement in Prague.

The parties are expected to sign an "intergovernmental agreement" in late June. Botaş Deputy General Manager Şakir Arıkan said the talks continue and that the sides may sign the Nabucco papers any minute. Turkey and Azerbaijan are part of these complex, chess-like negotiations. Botaş General Manager Saltuk Düzyol and the newly appointed Energy Minister Taner Yıldız accompanied Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during a trip to the Azerbaijani capital of Baku. And that is the evidence.

Erdoğan’s Baku trip is as critical for the Nabucco project as it is for relations with Armenia. The reason is that about a month ahead of the summit declaration in Prague, it was claimed that Moscow had convinced Baku to sell the natural gas (about 9 billion cube meters) allocated for Nabucco to the Russian energy giant Gazprom. It was even speculated that Russia promised to buy the Azerbaijani gas at a price that Europeans were to pay.

Erdoğan’s remarks, "We will increase the price of Azeri gas," during his Baku speech proves bargaining continues about the Azerbaijani natural gas. Without doubt Russia will continue with attempts to block the Nabucco project, which is designed to decrease Europeans’ dependency to Russian gas. Russia will play its own "energy game." One of the questions in my mind is Russia’s next move because Russian energy dominance in the Caucasus is contingent upon a Russian-Azerbaijani partnership in full. In this sense, Erdoğan’s visit to Russia is quite critical.

Turkey’s demand

Another question about Nabucco’s conclusion document is Turkey’s request for a 15 percent discount in gas price.

We know that the European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Pielbags announced immediately after the conclusion document was released that Turkey withdrew its request.

But Yıldız says the opposite. Which is true here? One other question is about the attitudes of France, Germany and Italy, which have already given tremendous support to Nabucco and then to the South Stream project.

Will the steadiest partner, the EU, manage to create a balanced equation among the countries in this partnership and the energy corporations involved in the project?

But most importantly, will the EU’s calculations to buy gas from Iraq and Iran work because the union doesn’t know how much gas would be transferred to the Nabucco pipeline from which country?