Brussels, 14/11/2008 (Agence Europe) - Energy cooperation with countries around the Caspian Sea and the transport corridor between the Caspian and the Baltic via the Odessa-Brody-Plotzk-Gdansk pipeline were at the centre of talks at the 4th energy security conference on 13 and 14 November 2008 in Baku, Azerbaijan, following on from similar conferences in Krakow in May 2006, Vilnius in November 2007 (see EUROPE 9520) and Kiev in May 2008. The conference was chaired by the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, and attended by heads of state of Turkey, Abdullah Gul, Georgia, Mikhael Saakashvili, Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, Poland, Lech Kaczynski, and Lithuania, Valdas Adamkus, along with Estonian prime minister Andrus Ansip, representatives of the Bulgarian, Romanian, Kazakh and Turkmen governments, and EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs.
On Thursday, the president of Lithuania, Valdas Adamkus, called for the EU to play a greater role in the Nabucco gas pipeline plans that would transport gas from central Asian countries and the Caspian Sea to the EU without passing through Russia, and also in the planned Odessa-Brody-Plotzk-Gdansk oil pipelines. In Vilnius last year, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine signed an agreement to set up the Samartia consortium to supervise the projects. Adamkus said Europe needed regular supplies of gas and oil but not from monopolies. He stressed the unique opportunity for Europe to get involved in the Caspian region and called on the EU to work closely with Azerbaijan through a strategic partnership. He said that failure or failure to carry through energy transport projects from the Caspian to Europe would send the wrong signal to energy suppliers and citizens back home. Commissioner Piebalgs travelled to Baku earlier in the month to get the country to commit to supply gas via Nabucco (see EUROPE 9778).
The summit ended on Friday with the adoption of a joint statement calling for diversification of fossil fuel supplies from the Caspian region and for these supplies to be made safe, effective and transparent. The statement calls for more efficient use to be made of the Odessa-Brody oil pipeline and for a feasibility study to be carried out on the plan for a corridor linking up the Caspian and Baltic Seas without dropping support for the Nabucco plan. The statement was signed by Piebalgs and the representatives of all nine Member States attending the conference. (E.H. trans fl)