Obama's BFF Turkey offers pipelines to Cyprus, Israel, Iraq.

Obama's BFF Turkey offers pipelines to Cyprus, Israel, Iraq.(HD).

Energy-hungry Turkey has offered to cooperate with its oil and gas-rich southern neighbors for the exploration and transportation of their hydrocarbon products to world markets via Turkey. It has particularly called out to Israel and Cyprus, which recently had problems over the legality of the licenses issued for petroleum exploration in the eastern Mediterranean.

“Israeli officials, local officials in Greek Cyprus and representatives of the TRNC [Turkish Republic of the Northern Cyprus], they have all agreed on one reality: The natural gas to be produced from this region will get its utmost feasibility by a pipeline that will pass through Turkey. All relevant figures prove this idea,” Energy Minister Taner Yıldız told the Hürriyet Daily News in a comprehensive interview outlining the Turkish government’s energy policies regarding oil and gas reserves of its southern neighbors.

Yıldız held substantial meetings with acting Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman and U.S. President Barack Obama’s special envoy for energy issues Carlos Pascual last week in Washington.
The meetings were crucially important as the two allies found themselves on opposite sides on a number of issues related to Baghdad-Ankara tension over the latter’s growing interest in making deals with the Kurdistan Regional Government and to the Turkey-Cyprus quarrel over the Greek Cypriot government’s ambitious moves for oil exploration in the disputed areas of the Mediterranean.

Although Yıldız underlines that Turkey appears to be the best route for these countries to flow their products to world markets, he is doing his best to show that Turkey is not in a position to abuse its geographical advantage in its potential talks with its neighbors.

“Turkey does not say ‘Well, you are obliged to pass through our territories, so let’s talk over this.’ It adopts a very realistic approach,” he said. “Instead,” Yıldız continued, “Turkey says it’s open to any sort of projects with the accomplishment of political stability in the region.”

The involvement of foreign energy companies from many western countries including the United States makes the situation a little more complicated as Turkey said it would not allow those companies operating on the island to do business in its territories.

Yıldız said he made clear to his American counterparts the Turkish position regarding Greek Cyprus’s operations and underlined that “We have seen that not only our correctness but also our rightfulness is being confirmed [by the U.S.].”

When it comes to cooperating with Israel on its energy projects, Yıldız drew attention to the fact that first there was a need for political feasibility to talk about these projects’ technical feasibility. The minister recalled that there were signs of this political feasibility after Israel apologized to Turkey but he wanted to underline that these projects could never be presented as the reasons for this apology. “They may well be the consequences of this apology,” he stressed. Hmmmm.... I thought Jews were supposed to be smart people, which Jew on Earth would trust Turkey to allow Israeli gas trough their pipeline?As i said before 'Israel has been 'discussed' a lot between Obama and Erdogan during his visit.Read the full story here.