ADANA/YUMURTALIK - Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Turkey was not a self-sufficient country in field of energy and it was dependent to foreign countries in terms of basic energy resources.
Erdogan and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder officially opened on Tuesday the ''Isken-Sugozu Energy Power Plant'' constructed by German companies STEAG AG and RWE POWER AG in Iskenderun town of southern province of Hatay.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, Erdogan said he was proud of opening the Sugozu Thermic Power Plant, which was the biggest thermic power plant in Turkey, together with German Chancellor Schroeder.
Erdogan said that the power plant which was one of the significant examples of Turkish-German cooperation and constructed through build-operate project financing model, constituted an important and pleasing stage that had been reached in German investments in Turkey since 1980s.
Prime Minister Erdogan stressed that meaning of nearly 1,5 billion U.S. dollars of direct foreign capital investment that was provided with the power plant would be understood better when 4.33 billion U.S. dollars of total German investments in Turkey between 1980-2002 were considered. ''Unfortunately, Turkey is not a self-sufficient country in energy field and it is dependent to foreign countries in terms of basic energy resources. Our energy consumption shows an annual increase of seven or eight percent. Today, domestic energy production meets only thirty-five percent of total energy demand. If necessary studies on domestic supply resources are not carried out, rate of external dependency can rise to seventy-eight percent in 2020 due to demand that would be much above production capabilities. With this respect, our basic priority in our energy policy is to provide safe energy supply and increase the variety of energy resources. Our government is determined to carry on these studies,'' he said.
Erdogan said that Turkey undertook active role both in development of energy resources in former Soviet Union geography, particularly Caspian basin and studies on alternative routes under its energy requirements and under the importance it attributed to regional economic development.
Stressing that Turkey was situated in the intersection point of the regions which possessed nearly three-fourths of hydrocarbon reserves in the world, Erdogan said, ''Turkey has been targeting to constitute a bridge between Europe and Caspian and the Middle East and meet its own needs from different sources.''
Noting that Turkey had taken its place in regional and global energy diplomacy with the projects it put into practice, Erdogan said that physical construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline which became one of the significant energy projects in the world was underway in each country.
Stating that the first tanker to carry Caspian oil would be loaded from Ceyhan in 2005, Erdogan said, ''at this very moment, I can give the good news that the Ceyhan terminal would be one of the leading oil centers of Europe.''
Erdogan said that the natural gas pipeline project which envisaged transfer of natural gas to Austria and other European markets via the route of Bulgaria-Romania-Hungary under the natural gas agreement that Turkey had signed with Greece, would have a key role in target of bringing Caspian and Middle East origin natural gas to Europe.
Stressing that those projects were very important both for Turkey and for energy safety of the European Union (EU), Erdogan said that the EU Commission attributed importance to Turkey's role in those projects and it financed feasibility studies of those projects.
''Besides studies on connecting our electricity network to European electricity network have been continuing in cooperation with the EU Commission. It is seen that our strategic energy cooperation has opened new horizons to Turkey-EU relations and supported determined steps that Turkey takes on EU path. Thus, we hope that support of Germany which is one the leading EU countries to energy projects concerning Turkey would continue increasingly,'' he said.
Erdogan added that the power plant which would generate 9 billion kWh electricity would meet seven percent of power demand in Turkey.
(MS-AÖ) 24.02.2004