From The National Interest, July 15:
Turkey’s geography, infrastructure, and regional influence position it to reshape Europe’s energy security through a new overland corridor linking four major energy basins.
For decades, Turkey has pitched itself as an energy bridge between East and West, North and South. If Turkey can finally deliver to the world a solution to overcome its reliance on the Strait of Hormuz, the economic and strategic prize will be enormous.
The Four Seas Initiative Could Redraw Global Energy Routes
The Four Seas Initiative identifies Turkey as the keystone in the infrastructural response to the Strait of Hormuz crisis. The idea is simple. The four seas: the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Black Sea are among the most important energy geographies in the world. Yet they remain connected largely through bilateral deals and infrastructure shaped by old political divisions—not to mention being vulnerable to war and blockade. The Four Seas Initiative proposes an overland energy and infrastructure corridor linking these four basins through Syria and Turkey, carrying Gulf, Iraqi, Caspian, and eastern Mediterranean energy toward lucrative European markets.
For Turkey, this marks the arrival of the role Ankara has long sought: not merely to be a country through which energy passes, but to become the operator, rule-setter and commercial center of a continental redistribution system.
This agenda-setting role is due to the absolute scale of the project. At full operational capacity, the Four Seas corridor is projected to move an estimated 3 million to 4 million barrels of oil per day and 40 billion to 50 billion cubic meters of gas per year toward Mediterranean and European markets. As a network, it will compete in scale with Nord Stream. It would put the Syria–Turkey corridor in the first rank of global energy routes, combining Gulf oil, Iraqi exports, Caspian gas and eastern Mediterranean supply into a single overland system....
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