Putin says Turkish, South Streams pipelines still possible

MOSCOW, Jun 7 (PRIME) -- Moscow has not fully abandoned either the Turkish Stream or the South Stream projects, it only needs a clear position of the European Commission on the matter, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday in a news conference following his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In December 2014, Russia cancelled building the South Stream natural gas pipeline, which was supposed to carry Russian gas to Europe bypassing Ukraine, and decided to redirect all gas supplies to Turkey through the yet-to-be-built Turkish Stream pipeline. But the talks on the project stalled as relations between the two countries worsened.

“Speaking of (natural gas) export routes under the Black Sea, we all are aware of certain political difficulties in Turkey. But we have not fully rejected any of the projects – either the Turkish Stream or the South Stream. We only need a clear position of the European Commission, a clear and perfectly understandable. We do not have that for either of these projects,” he said.

Putin said that Gazprom will offer the amount of gas it now supplies to Poland to any other European partner if the country does not prolong its contract after 2022. Gazprom is now studying whether it can offer a 10–15 year contract to any other partner to sell the Polish amounts of gas at the Belarussian–Polish border, he said.

Still, Russia assumes that Poland may reject prolongation of the contract with Gazprom, as the statement was made by a high-ranked official and Gazprom’s contractor is a state-owned company, he said.

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