JERUSALEM, October 1 (ITAR-TASS) – Project of Russian natural gas supplies to Israel via the territory of Turkey is “very promising” and it was one of the issues discussed by co-chairmen of the Russian-Israeli intergovernmental commission at talks here, First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, the co-chairman on the Russian side told reporters Thursday before departure for Moscow.
“That’s a very promising project and we think we must work in that direction,” Zubkov said.
“We have an opportunity to build a Blue Stream-2 pipeline across the Turkish territory.” he said.
To make the project profitable, however, it is important to invite other countries, like Russia, Turkey, Israel, maybe Cyprus and some Middle East States, to take part in it, Zubkov indicated.
“We agreed to begin with bilateral talks and, in fact, negotiations between Gazprom executives and officials from the Israeli Energy and Natural Gas Authorities of the Ministry of Infrastructures began yesterday,” he said. “They were quite successful, I was told, and the work in that field will continue.”
“In the future, we may agree on trilateral talks with Turkey and, maybe, with some other countries, too.”
In the course of the two-day visit, Viktor Zubkov held talks with Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who chairs the intergovernmental commission on the Israeli side.
Besides, he had meetings with President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.