"Turkey, Britain And Oil
29 Jul 2010 02:05 pm
Sometimes in the world (if not so often in the US), foreign policy really isn't about Israel. A reader writes:
The recent screeching coming from the neocon stands with regard to Turkey seem to miss the fact Turkey is emerging as the major energy broker of the region with the help of the UK. Take the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline for instance. As its name implies, this pipeline takes crude oil from the Caspian fields all the way to the Mediterranean Turkish sea port of Ceyhan. The pipeline, which came into full operation in May 2006, has for its largest shareholder a company called BP (30.1%). Then there is the South Caucasus pipeline (December 2006), which takes natural gas along the same route as the previously mentioned pipeline but ends up at Erzurum in Turkey instead, where it is joined by the Tabriz-Ankara pipeline coming from the gas fields of Iran (yes, Iran). BP is also an important shareholder of the South Caucasus pipeline (25.5%). The geo-strategic aims of these two projects were to diversify the energy supplies and lessen Europe's dependence on Russian oil and gas."
More:Turkey, Britain And Oil - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan