You're reading: Turkish expert says Turkey can help Ukraine achieve energy security

Both countries can cooperate in the realization of pipelines for the transportation of Middle Eastern as well as Eastern Mediterrenean gas resources to Ukraine via pipelines between Samsun, Turkey and Odesa under the Black Sea, said Oktay Tanrisever, program coordinator for the Ankara-based Center for European Studies, during a conference in Kyiv on July 3.

“However, at present there are problems in finding the adequate amount of supplies
and in ensuring the cost-effectiveness of such projects,” the professor told the Kyiv Post.

Construction of an LNG terminal near Odesa, meanwhile, in the long term could cover 20 percent of country’s almost
50 billion cubic meters annual needs in natural gas and reduce dependence on the Russian supplies, experts suggest. 

It is possible to bring LNG-bearing tankers into the Black Sea via the busy Dardenelles. As Tanrisever explained, “ In line with NATO’s concept of critical energy infrastructure security,
Turkey seeks to enhance safety of the straits and the people living
around the straits without any restriction on tanker traffic at all.”

Meanwhile, Sergiy
Yevtushenko, head of the State Agency for Investment and Development,
yet in May mentioned that Ukraine is
not giving up on the LNG terminal project
.

Advisor to the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Roman
Rukomeda noted that LNG terminals in Poland and Lithuania should be
commissioned within the next year, which could provide Ukraine with an
alternative to some Russian gas purchases. Polish media report that the planned
terminal at Swinoujscie should produce up to 5 billion cubic meters of LNG per
year starting in late 2015, while the one under construction at Klaipėdos,
Lithuania should re-liquefy 2-3 billion cubic meters.

Turkey would like to see the long-suffering Nabucco pipeline running
through Anatolia extended into Europe, delivering Azerbaijan and Turkmen gas to
the European Union. Critics of the project say that not enough gas is readily
available from Middle Eastern sources to make Nabucco economically viable,
while project can be seen as harming Ukraine’s interests because Nabucco would
lead to lesser supplies of Russian gas, that goes through the Ukrainian gas
transportation system, to the EU.

Still, Turkey can assist Ukraine in energy sector through investing in
coal mines, Tanrisever says. Of course, that would require privatization that
foreign investors could easily participate in.

Yet on May 29 Ukrainian government announced privatization of 38
state-owned coal mines which is 30 percent of all the functioning mines in the country.

Kyiv Post
business journalist Evan Ostryzniuk can be reached at
[email protected].