Turkey sounds alarm over oil transport risks on the Bosphorus Strait

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ANKARA: Turkey sounded the alarm Monday over the amount of oil transiting the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, warning of an environmental disaster waiting to happen. "The quantity of oil passing through the straits has increased by 50 percent in the past three years," Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler told a two-day conference here on energy cooperation in the Caspian and Black Sea regions.

"If anything were to happen in the straits, it would pose a major problem for the region, notably for Istanbul, and would affect oil supply for months." "An environmental accident in Istanbul would be a disaster," he said.

Guler repeated Turkey's view that a new Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which he said should be operational within months, would be the best way to transport Caucasian oil towards the West while cutting congestion in the two northwestern straits.

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In 2003, 46,930 ships sailed through the straits, more than 8,000 of them carrying high-risk cargo such as oil or liquefied gas. Russia is the largest single transporter of oil through the straits.

Daily Star