NATO member Turkey’s foreign ministry said on Friday that lifting Western sanctions against countries such as Iran and Venezuela would ease the global energy crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
On the one hand, Venezuela has been under US oil sanctions since 2019
And Iran has been under US sanctions since the Donald Trump administration decided to unilaterally end the nuclear deal signed in 2015 in the Austrian capital of Vienna between Iran and the P5+1 powers (China, Russia, the United States, France, United Kingdom, and Germany).
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Currently, talks between Tehran and Washington on restarting the nuclear deal have stalled.
For its part, Iran has the world’s second-largest reserves of natural gas after Russia, but lacks the infrastructure to boost its exports, which are currently limited to Iraq and Turkey.
“The whole world needs Venezuela’s oil and natural gas. On the other hand, there was an embargo on Iranian oil” that should be lifted to ease the global energy crisis, according to Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.
“Remove these sanctions. If you want prices to go down, lift embargoes on countries that put their products on the market,” he added, saying, “You can’t solve a problem by threatening a country.”
Turkey, which has tried a balancing act with good relations with Russia and Ukraine, has avoided Western sanctions against Moscow and strengthened trade ties with its Black Sea neighbor.
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed to his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that Russian gas be exported through Turkey, making the country a new gas supply hub for Europe to maintain Russia’s energy influence over Europe.
The proposal was made at the sixth Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Astana, Kazakhstan.
Putin said that Turkey offers the most reliable gas supply route to the European Union.
Russia is trying to divert supplies from two Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea, which were damaged by a series of explosions last month.
Sweden has blocked Russia from investigating the leaks and Putin accuses the US of sabotage.
In late September, four major gas leaks occurred between Russia and Germany at two gas pipelines, which some countries said were caused by underwater explosions.
On September 26, Nord Stream 2 AG, the operator of the Russian-German pipeline, reported a gas leak of unknown cause in one of two infrastructure pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm.
Later, two parallel lines of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline were also damaged.
Given the impossibility of transporting Russian gas through these pipelines, which connect Russia directly to Germany, Putin told Erdogan at the bilateral meeting between Russia and Turkey that the project was “a platform not only for deliveries, but also for determining the price”. which will allow Turkey to set any price it wants and achieve significant margins.
In this regard, Erdogan reiterated on Wednesday that his country will indeed become a center for the distribution of Russian natural gas to Europe in the winter, once a final agreement is reached with Russia.
During the weekly meeting of the Justice and Development Party faction in the Grand National Assembly (Turkish parliament), Erdogan said he and Putin had expressed “unity” on the idea during their last meeting in Kazakhstan on Thursday.
Erdogan has reported that work should begin as soon as possible on the development of infrastructure to bring gas from Russia to Europe through Turkey before winter sets in on the Old Continent.
Russian and Turkish energy authorities are working together to determine the best location for a gas distribution hub.
The Turkish region of Thrace, which borders Greece and Bulgaria, seems to be the right place.
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