MOSCOW, January 23 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan discussed energy cooperation by telephone Monday, the Kremlin press office said, with the Blue Stream gas project as the main focus.
At November's formal inauguration of the Blue Stream pipeline - which can deliver up to 16 billion cu m per year of Russian natural gas to Turkey - Putin said the pipeline could be expanded by a third and extended into southern Europe.
The project would help diversify Russia's gas export routes to Europe, which currently rely mainly on pipelines running through Ukraine. That dependence became a source of increasing concern among Russia's European customers at the start of this month following Russia's gas dispute with Ukraine, which prompted export monopoly Gazprom to shut off supplies to its neighbor.
Gazprom is also planning to build a subsea pipeline running from Russia under the Baltic Sea directly to Germany - the North European gas pipeline - which it intends to bring into service by 2010.
