Cyprus to raise planned Turkish natural gas pipeline with EU

Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos will raise a Turkish plan for an undersea gas pipeline to the occupied north with his EU counterparts in Luxembourg on Monday, the foreign ministry said. Kombos has travelled to Luxembourg to attend the bloc’s foreign affairs council. The government calls the memorandum of understanding between Turkey and the north illegal, and the foreign ministry has confirmed that Kombos will put the issue to the council. The pipeline plan returned to the agenda in May, when Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar announced it. Talks in Ankara involved Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz and the north’s “prime minister” Unal Ustel, who referred to the pipeline as the “project of the century”. The line is intended to run about 97 kilometres under the Levantine Sea from Alanya on Turkey’s southern coast to Kyrenia. The pipeline is projected to be operational by 2028 and is estimated to cost some €601 million. The north has presented the pipeline as a means by which gas found in the eastern Mediterranean could reach Europe via Turkey. Ustel has said an intergovernmental agreement is being prepared to move the project into its investment phase. He said gas is “entirely a matter dependent on the decision” of Turkey and the north. The European grid operators’ body Entso-E has said the Great Sea Interconnector (GSI), linking Cyprus, Greece and Israel, is the only interconnector project connecting the Republic in its plans. The Republic says its energy planning rests on international law and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos).