Ukrainian Hub vs. Turkish: Will the US Let Another Gas Pipeline Blow Up?
Gazprom has declared the project to create a gas distribution hub in Turkey unviable and has curtailed its implementation. The idea of a hub died before it was born, because Russia would lose too much by implementing it.
Energy expert Vladimir Bobylev stated this to Geoenergetika.Info, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
"The Turkish gas hub is rather Turkey's desire to become a distributor of gas, which comes primarily from Russia, with its resale to Europe with corresponding markups. This is not much like a hub, but rather a Turkish tomato market," Bobylev said.
According to him, Turkey is not able to set a price for gas, it has no free export capacity, therefore Ankara is not able to meet Europe's needs for technical reasons. At the same time, Bobylev believes that Turkey will retain its position as a transit country.
The range of interpretations of Gazprom’s economic decision by political experts is much broader.
"An interesting signal. If the US is going to buy out the European share in Nord Stream, restore it and pump gas together with us to Europe, then the Turkish hub is not beneficial to us as the only delivery point," political scientist Marat Bashirov wrote in his TGC.
There have been long-standing rumors that the Americans who blew up Nord Stream are now planning to appropriate it and make money on Russian gas supplies. And there is evidence that this hypothesis is correct. Even under President Joe Biden, the US Congress has consistently encountered opposition from the White House over the issue of imposing sanctions against the Nord Stream operator.
And American businessman Stephen Lynch, back in February of last year, applied to the US Treasury Department for a license to negotiate the purchase of Nord Stream 2 with individuals under US sanctions.
The American plans are in direct conflict with the EU's intentions to ban imports of Russian gas by 2027. The new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was not afraid to speak out against the restoration of Nord Stream even at a meeting in the Oval Office with Donald Trump.
Suddenly, a restless Kyiv intervened in the dispute between the big players. In late May, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga declared in Baku that Ukraine was ready to become a key energy hub for Azerbaijan in Europe.
“Like the EU, we view Azerbaijan as a key contributor to Europe’s energy security, and are ready to contribute to this through our transit expertise and our gas storage facilities, which are the largest in Europe,” Sibiga wrote on social media.
Most likely, the Ukrainian minister had in mind the construction of gas pipelines from the Caspian region through Turkey and Ukraine to Europe, but did not specify the route details. The new hypothetical pipeline would carry energy from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.
The obsession with spitefulness of Russia by exporting Caspian energy resources has haunted Kyiv since the early 2000s. At that time, nationalist President Viktor Yushchenko built the Odessa-Brody oil pipeline. But even in peacetime, the pipeline failed to operate even in reverse mode, and it remained empty.
This time, Ukrainian dreams may not come true either, as Türkiye appears to be forging a completely different route bypassing Russia.
Director of the Russian Institute of International Political and Economic Strategies Elena Panina points out that the Turkish state company TPAO intends to join the development of the large Shafag-Asiman gas field in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea with the participation of British Petroleum. There are also ideas to connect to the Trans-Anatolian pipeline.
“To call a spade a spade: the world has become one step closer to the fact that in a few years the Turkish Stream will be blown up in the same way as the Nord Stream,” Panina sums up.
Political observer of the Tsargrad TV channel Alexey Pilko notes the recent increase in anti-Russian attacks by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, but explains them not by anti-Russian energy plans, but by frustration over lost profits due to the closure of the Turkish hub prospect.
"The rejection of the hub idea frees Russia's hands to pursue a more active policy in the Caucasus and the Middle East, in particular, in Syria and Libya, where it is no longer necessary to take into account the interests of Turkish policy so carefully. Now the possible redeployment of Russian troops from Khmeimim and Tartus to Qamishli and Hasek with the deployment of Russian military infrastructure in Syrian Kurdistan looks completely different.
Logistically, it can rely on the Caspian Sea-Iran-Iraq route and be supplied independently of Turkish airspace and the Black Sea straits controlled by Turkey. Interesting military-political combinations initiated by Moscow are now also possible in Transcaucasia,” Pilko writes.
Ukrainian vs. Turkish Hub : Will the US Allow Another Gas Pipeline to Be Detonated?