Turkey’s importance as an energy conduit feeding Europe received fresh attention in January as Greek Development Minister Dimitris Sioufas announced that the Greek section of a 285-km Greece-Turkey natural gas pipeline —bringing gas from Azerbaijan through Turkey to Europe—would be running by May 2007. With the much-heralded Baku-Tibilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline already supplying Europe with oil from fields in the Caucasus, Europeans are now looking forward to a parallel inflow of gas, bolstering Turkey’s importance as an energy hub feeding the continent. “When the pipeline is operational, a major step will be taken in the implementation of a natural gas corridor between Greece, Turkey and Italy,” confirmed Sioufas. Drawing from Azerbaijan’s 400 billion m3 Shah Deniz gas field, and eventually from other sources, is intended to reduce European reliance on Russian energy supplies. Indeed, Russia’s use of its vast energy supplies as a political tool to bully energy-reliant former Soviet states
