ANKARA: Turkey has suspended energy projects with Italian giant ENI because it is involved in exploration for oil and gas off the divided island of Cyprus, the Turkish energy minister said yesterday.
“We have decided not to work with ENI in Turkey, including suspending their ongoing projects,” Taner Yildiz was quoted as saying by the state-run Anatolia news agency.
ENI, along with the private Turkish group Calik, is a partner in the Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline project that aims to deliver Russian and Kazakh crude oil to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast.
Calik will make its own decision whether to continue working with ENI but Ankara is not in favour of the Italian group remaining on the project.
The pipeline is expected to carry up to 70 million tonnes of oil annually from Turkey’s Black Sea city of Samsun to its Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
It was not clear, however, if Turkey would oppose ENI involvement in the South Stream project, a separate, strategic gas pipeline plan.
ENI head Paolo Scaroni told Italian news agency Radiocor he regretted the decision, but remained confident that common ground still existed and that positive relations with Turkey would recover.
In 2011, Turkey gave Russia a green light for the South Stream project to run through Black Sea waters, paving the way for a pipeline designed to transport 63 billion cubic metres (2.2 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas per year.
The Russian behemoth Gazprom owns 50 percent of the South Stream project and ENI has 20 percent, while the German company Wintershall and Electricite de France (EDF) each holds 15 percent.
ENI is also a partner to the Blue Stream pipeline which crosses the Black Sea, taking Russian gas to Turkey. Turkey has warned that companies involved in exploration for energy resources in waters off Cyprus would be excluded from Ankara’s energy investment plans. AFP
