Azerbaijan, Turkey Engage in Bickering Over Nabucco
Azerbaijan has questioned Turkey’s attitude to the Nabucco pipeline project after Baku failed to receive a copy of the signed contract from Ankara, according to a top official from the Caspian nation.
“Unfortunately nobody sent us the copy of this Project Support Agreement,” Elshad Nasirov, the vice president of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), told the Hürriyet Daily News during a recent interview. “And we will not ask for it, because this will violate the principle of equal treatment for … three projects – Nabucco, the Trans Adriatic Pipeline [TAP] and the Interconnection Turkey-Greece-Italy [ITGI].”
Azerbaijan was the only project partner absent when the legal framework for the Nabucco Pipeline was reportedly signed and finalized on June 8 for the project support agreements, or PSAs, between Nabucco Gas Pipeline International GmbH and the responsible ministries of the five transit countries, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Turkey.
The signature ceremony was organized just before Turkey’s June 12 general elections in the Central Anatolian province of Kayseri, where Turkish energy minister was running for a seat in Parliament.
The agreements were described by the Nabucco consortium as the affirmation of an advantageous regulatory transit regime under European and Turkish laws, protection against any discriminatory changes in said laws and support for legislative and administrative actions for the implementation of the project.
Nasirov also said an obligatory bilateral transit agreement between Azerbaijan and Turkey to make the project a reality had not been signed yet either, he said.
“We were very close to signing this agreement in April and May. But some minor and some important things prevented two parties to agree and finalize it,” said Nasirov.
“As we understand, this agreement supports the further implementation and development of the Nabucco concept. But I would like to ask you, does this signature of the project support agreement mean the decision of the Turkish Republic was made to start the transit of gas from Azerbaijan? And if it does, why don’t we sign the bilateral transit agreement in order to enable the two other projects? If we have not yet signed the transit agreement, should we understand that Nabucco has still not been sanctioned by Turkey?” asked Nasirov.
For the ITGI and TAP, Nasirov said that in order to transfer gas through Turkish territory, there needs to be a transit agreement between Turkey and Azerbaijan. “So these projects also cannot be implemented without a transit agreement.”
Source: Hurriyet Daily News