Turkey as a Regional Natural Gas Hub : Myth or Reality?

This article summarizes the key results of a field study carried out in Istanbul and just published in the FEEM Note di Lavoro/working paper series. The study aims to explore Turkey's real potential to become a regional natural gas hub, by focusing on the current situation of gas producing countries around Turkey and then moving to the future prospects of gas cooperation in the region. To this end, the study provides an assessment of both the current situation and outlook of gas markets in Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Iraq, Iran, Israel and Cyprus, subsequently providing a discussion of the future prospects of the Southern Gas Corridor and of the potential Eastern Mediterranean Gas Corridor. This analysis demonstrates that Turkey will hardly have the potential to become a regional gas hub in the medium term (up to 2020-2025), while it could have the potential to play an important role in the regional gas markets in the longer term (after 2025-2030) if a number of infrastructural, commercial and political barriers are overcome and - last but not the least - if the EU gas demand recovers and the EU market actually needs more natural gas supplies