YEREVAN, April 26, /ARKA/. Sevak Sarukhanian, head of Noravank think-tank, told a roundtable today on nuclear energy issues that construction of infrastructure to transport Armenian electricity to neighboring Turkey would cost $500 million.
He said the available infrastructure is not enough to meet the constantly growing electricity needs in eastern Turkey. According to him, power consumption in Turkey has been growing at an average annual rate of 7% since 1950 along with economic growth. He said electricity needs in eastern Turkey also grow 7% a year.
He said serious investments in development of the infrastructure would raise its capacity up to 1000 megawatt and that would facilitate sales of electricity to Turkey. According to him, the available infrastructure is enough to sell 300 megawatt electricity. The cost of such a deal would be $120 million but it would not bring profits to Armenia. He said real results could be achieved only after Turley opens its border with Armenia.
Turkey and Armenia have had no diplomatic ties since Armenia became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991. Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in a show of support for its ally, Azerbaijan, which had a dispute with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, the ethnic Armenian enclave of Azerbaijan. There are several sensitive issues complicating the establishment of normal relations between the two countries, particularly, Ankara’s blatant support of Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution process and Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge the mass killings of Armenians in the last years of the Ottoman Empire as a genocide. -0-
via Construction of infrastructure to sell electricity to turkey will cost $500 million: expert | 26/04/2011 21:54 | News agency ARKA – Armenian news.