FT: Could the “cancelled” South Stream pipeline be revived?

Vladimir Putin seemed pretty emphatic on Monday that Russia would stop construction of the South Stream gas pipeline, shelving a strategically important project that Moscow was counting on to cement its influence in south-eastern Europe.

Speaking after talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his Turkish counterpart, in Ankara, Putin said Russia would abandon the project to bring Russian gas to Bulgaria under the Black Sea, bypassing Ukraine, unless the EU dropped its opposition.

But does this really mark the full stop that it appears to be? It is true that Alexei Miller, CEO of Gazprom, the company charged with building the pipeline, told reporters: “that’s it, the project is closed”. But analysts see a more subtle game in play.  

“South Stream is postponed and diverted, but is not necessarily dead,” Rem Korteweg, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform (CER), told beyondbrics. “The original pipeline route, across the Black Sea, coming ashore in Bulgaria, will not be built. But an alternative route – via Turkey – may still emerge to reach the European market.”  MORE