EU Preparing Gas Agreement with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan

The European Commission is ready to speed up the conclusion of agreements with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan to address the issue of gas supplies to Europe. It is reported by Spiegel Online, citing two papers prepared for the Energy Union EU. This structure will be adjusted in the future cooperation in energy issues. However, Spiegel calls this a political decision "questionable."

 According to documents in the current year the EU intends to sign with Baku and Ashgabat memoranda of understanding, which should be part of a package to improve the "stability" of supplying Europe with natural gas. The EU would like to develop this package until 2016.

"The EU will use all the foreign policy tools to strengthen the strategic energy partnership with producer and transit countries," quotes the document Spiegel Online. These are: Algeria, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, the Middle East and several African countries. The project also involves the intensification of partnership with Norway, the US and Canada.

According to the publication, some of these partners seem to be very doubtful. Turkmenistan has perhaps the world's largest reserves of natural gas, but at the same time, the authorities in Ashgabat are a dictatorial regime, and according to the rating of Transparency International, the country is among the ten most corrupt countries on earth. Azerbaijan ranks 162 out of 180 in the ranking of press freedom. -02D-