Analyst Explains Role of Different Countries in Turkish Stream

Earlier this week, Kommersant daily cited sources as saying that the Russian gas giant Gazprom announced plans to extend the Turkish Stream pipeline to Bulgaria, then Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia. The Bulgarian and Serbian routes are expected to be put in operation in 2020, followed by Hungary in 2021 and Slovakia in mid-2022, reports Sputnik. 

Bulgaria's readiness to add to the implementation of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline project on its territory may have an impact on the project-related interests of a number of Western European countries, especially Austria, contributor Dmitry Lekukh argued in his article for Sputnik.

He suggested that "Austria may play a key role [in the project] when it becomes the end point of the European part of Turkish Stream in the town of Baumgarten and closes the so-called European gas ring."

In this vein, Lekukh recalled that the Austrian energy company OMV had indicated its intent to take part in the construction of the second leg of Turkish Stream so as to extend the pipeline to the Baumgarten hub.

"This is a logical step, given that Austria is the place where the northern and southern corridors of Russian gas transportation merge, and where  'reverse' in all directions of a single 'gas ring' is possible in difficult political and/or technological situations," Lekukh pointed out.

Secondly, Austria and Germany possess voluminous, well-equipped underground gas storage facilities (UGSF) which can be used as an alternative to much-hyped Ukrainian UGSFs, he says.

Lekukh recalled in this context that "earlier, many 'democratic experts' assured us that Russian gas exports to Europe are risky and practically impossible without Ukrainian UGSFs", a technological problem which he noted can now be...

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