Caspian Report - Issue 06 - Winter 2014

Before discussing the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC),
it is important to define what this means. The SGC
is a policy initiative launched by the European
Commission (EC) in November 2009, discussed at
the EC’s May 2009 “Southern Corridor - New Silk
Road” summit in Prague.
1. WHAT IS THE SOUTHERN GAS
CORRIDOR
Before discussing the Southern Gas
Corridor (SGC), it is important to
define what this means. The SGC
is a policy initiative launched by
the European Commission (EC) in
November 2009, discussed at the EC’s
May 2009 “Southern Corridor - New
Silk Road” summit in Prague. The
Prague Summit had been intended to
solve, and indeed did solve, two of the
problems that had been standing in the
way of the planned Nabucco pipeline.
Those problems concerned the pricing
and the legal regime for Turkey’s
consumption of the gas that Nabucco
would have transported. 1
The EC’s formal declaration of the SGC
initiative through its Communication
“Second Strategic Energy Review - An
EU Energy Security and Solidarity
Action Plan” (COM/2008/781)
in November 2009, identified the
project’s partner countries, namely
those that could represent a supply
source of energy for the EU. Most
of these countries are located in
the Caspian Sea region (Azerbaijan,
Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, and
Turkmenistan, as well as Uzbekistan
if and when political conditions
permit), though also in Southwest
Asia (Iraq; also Iran if and when
political conditions permit) along with
North Africa (Egypt and the Mashreq
countries/Levant).
Three pipelines designated within
the EU’s Trans-European Networks -
Energy (TEN-E) program as being “of
strategic importance” were originally
included in the SGC. These were the
Nabucco pipeline, the Interconnector
Turkey-Greece-Italy (ITGI), and the
White Stream pipeline (a now-dormant
undersea project from Georgia to the
Balkans). EU Energy Commissioner
29
CASPIAN REPORT, WINTER 2014
1
. The EU had insisted that Turkey pay the equivalent of European prices; Turkey had proposed a figure 15% less than that. The
compromise was the common-sense rule that Turkey’s price would be based on the cost of transportation to the point of
consumption. As for the legal regime, the EU abandoned its insistence that the norms of its acquis communautaire apply in
Turkey; rather, a middle ground within Turkish law was found.