ankara • Turkey and Israel have agreed to build a pipeline linking the Black and Red seas, Turkey’s energy minister said yesterday, in a move boosting the Jewish state’s energy security and Turkey’s role as an energy hub.

The pipeline project will involve transportation of oil, natural gas, electricity, water and fibre optic cables, the minister, Hilmi Guler, told reporters.

Turkey, a candidate for European Union membership, aspires to become a major hub for energy exports from Russia and the Caspian basin to markets in Europe and beyond. Turkey is also one of the few Muslim countries to foster strong trade and security ties with the Jewish state.

“This project will have very important consequences for regional stability and development and for political developments,” Guler said. He gave no price for the project but said Turkey was in talks with Russia and other countries on participation in it.

“The project’s feasibility study will be completed in six months and then implementation will begin,” Guler said.

A 550km pipeline is currently under construction linking Turkey’s Black Sea port of Samsun and Ceyhan on its Mediterranean coast. It is expected to have an annual capacity of 60 million to 70 million tonnes of crude oil. “As this project is an extension of the Samsun-Ceyhan pipeline, (Turkey’s) Calik group will also take part in the construction,” Guler added.

Guler gave no details about the route of the pipeline beyond Ceyhan, but Turkey’s Radikal newspaper said yesterday that it would extend to Israel’s Ashkelon, joining up there with an existing pipeline to the Israeli Red Sea port of Eilat.

Calling the Black Sea-Red Sea link “the project of the century”, Radikal said this would allow the long-term export of oil via the Red Sea to Asian markets.

An Israeli diplomat based in Ankara said Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would probably visit Turkey around mid-February to discuss the project with his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan.

Jordan and the Palestinian Territories are potential customers for water from the pipeline project, Guler said.

Ceyhan is also the terminal of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which has started pumping crude from the Caspian Sea, and of a pipeline from Iraq’s Kirkuk oilfields.

Turkey is keen to develop more pipelines to help relieve tanker congestion in its Bosphorus straits, the sole outlet at present for Russian oil heading into the Mediterranean from the Black Sea.

Some 150 million tonnes of crude oil pass through the straits each year and this will rise to 200 million tonnes by 2013, resulting in long waits for tankers and increasing the environmental risks, officials say.