Turkey offers to facilitate oil deliveries to India

Thu, 2 April 2009

DURING A visit by Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan to India in February, the government of Turkey is understood to have offered to facilitate the supply of oil to India from Central Asia via Israel through a combination of overland pipelines and super tankers. Under the plan, oil transported through Turkey’s pipeline infrastructure from Central Asia to Ceyhan would be sent across the Mediterranean Sea by tanker to Israel’s port of Ashkelon. There it would be fed into Israel’s Ashkelon-Eilat 254-km long pipeline. From Eilat tankers would transport the oil through the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea via the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea to India.

The Turkish offer is seen as a feasible transportation solution through which India could access Central Asian energy reserves. India currently imports about 70% of its oil, and this figure is expected to increase to over 90% by 2020. About 45% of current supplies come from the Gulf Co-operation Council countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, and a further 22% from other Middle Eastern countries. India is seen as being keen to diversify its source of energy supplies, and hence the Turkish proposal – which has been talked about for some time, but which has not been seen as a serious option until now – is being considered with great interest.