Gazprom starts financial motivation: Turkish Stream is more and more similar to South Stream

Against the background of the doubts of the potential European allies of Russia on the project of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline in its prospects, Gazprom includes in the negotiations the latest and most effective tool – a financial one. The monopoly,which has so far refused to participate in the construction of the onshore pipeline, changed its mind, offered this to Greece at a minimum. It is the scheme, on which it was planned to build a predecessor of Turkish Stream - South Stream.

On Friday, after meeting of head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller and the Energy Minister of Greece, Panagiotis Lafazanisom, the monopoly reported that it was ready to consider options for its participation in the construction of continuation from the Turkish Stream gas pipeline in Greece "on mutually beneficial conditions". The cost of the section construction is estimated at 2 billion euro. Until now, Gazprom talked only about guarantees of gas pumping through the territory of the member countries, which would allow them to attract financing for infrastructure. In turn, Athens hoped to receive a state loan from Russia, the country was going to return the money on account of the transit of Russian gas. Moscow didn’t agree to grant the loan and even acknowledged that it’s technically difficult to grant it to Greece: last week the Deputy Finance Minister, Sergei Storchak noted that the EU, as the largest creditor of Greece, could "lay barriers" on the way of attracting funding from other sources. What proportion of the funding Gazprom could undertake wasn’t explained.