TURKEY WILL PARTICIPATE IN 3-WAY MEETING ON AZERI

UNCLAS ANKARA 006569 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS USDOC FOR 4212/ITA/MAC/CPD/CRUSNAK DOE FOR CHARLES WASHINGTON EUR ALSO FOR MATT BRYZA S/P FOR STEVE HELLMAN E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: ENRG EPET PREL TU GG AJ SUBJECT: TURKEY WILL PARTICIPATE IN 3-WAY MEETING ON AZERI GAS DECEMBER 8 REF: A. TBILISI 3140 ¶B. BAKU 1754 ¶C. ANKARA 6396 ¶1. (SBU) The Turkish MFA confirms that Energy Minister Hilmi Guler has agreed to participate in an Azerbaijan-Georgia-Turkey meeting on natural gas in Tbilisi on December 8 (refs). ¶2. (SBU) On November 22, Undersecretary Sami Demirbilek reiterated to us Turkey's willingness to help Georgia with gas for this winter, as agreed by Prime Minister Erdogan during the BTC events in July. He stressed that Turkey was waiting for Azerbaijan to decide what it wanted to do and then for Azerbaijan and Georgia to strike an arrangment. Once this was agreed between Georgia and Azerbaijan, he thought it would be relatively easily to devise a formula that would make Turkey "whole" by agreement to postpone delivery of contracted Shah Deniz volumes at the reduced price to future years. He endorsed Statoil's proposition of a two step process: first political agreement, then implementation of the commercial arrangements. Fundamentally, however, Demirbilek said the BP-led consortium was having problems with the new gas wells and questioned whether or not Shah Deniz gas was available at all for export. Visit Ankara's Classified Web Site at http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/ankara/ WILSON