©Dreamstime

The turmoil in Turkey has implications for global oil markets, because of the country’s strategic position on energy trade routes from the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia to European markets.

About 2.9m barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products, roughly 3 per cent of world supplies, were carried on tankers through the Turkish straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean in 2013, according to US government statistics.

Turkey also has two important oil pipelines, one from Azerbaijan and another from Iraq, which both end at the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. They have a combined capacity of 2.7m b/d, but actual flows have been less than that, in part because of attacks on the pipelines and in part because of declining production from Azerbaijan. One Kurdish government official said the Turkey-Kurdistan border was still open and that there was so far no impact on crude oil flows.

Azerbaijan’s oil exports through Turkey averaged 720,000 b/d last year, while Iraq’s, from the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in the north of the country, reached a peak of about 600,000 b/d when not interrupted by attacks.

Turkey is also intended to be an increasingly important route for gas supplies to reach the EU.

In 2013 BP and partner companies agreed to build two pipelines to carry gas from Azerbaijan to Italy, creating what has been called the Southern Gas Corridor, with first gas deliveries to Europe on that route scheduled for late 2019. The route would carry 16bn cubic metres of gas per year from Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz field. The Turkish government and companies had also been in talks about taking gas from Israel’s giant Leviathan field.

Jason Bordoff of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy said Turkey was a “hugely important transport hub” for oil and gas flows.

“If there is disruption to supplies, that could have a material impact on the oil market,” he said.

The US has in recent years backed plans to increase gas supplies to the EU flowing through Turkey, and the use of the country’s pipelines as export routes for Iraqi oil.

Mr Bordoff said the turmoil in Turkey was a reminder of the importance for all energy consumers of having a wide range of suppliers.

“Expanding diversity of supply provides increased energy security for when unexpected events happen,” he said.