Erdogan says Turkey-Iraq future railway line can be a ‘new Silk Road’
Erdogan says Turkey-Iraq future railway line can be a ‘new Silk Road’
Iraq approved the project for the so-called Development Road (also known as the Dry Canal), a rail and road network that will link Basrah, in the south of Iraq, with the Turkish border. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the project has the potential to become “the new ‘Silk Road’ of our region”.
This initiative, once completed, will connect the Grand Faw Port, being built near the Persian Gulf, with the Turkish port of Mersin, on the Mediterranean Sea. With this project, Iraq could thus become a new key hub for transportation between Asia and Europe. The project for a railway line connecting the south of Iraq to Turkey was brought forwards at the end of January by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Iraq and Turkey’s recent approval of the project makes its realisation official.
Connecting the Grand Faw Port to Turkey by rail
The railway corridor connecting the Grand Faw Port with the Turkish border is expected to cost over 18 billion euros and be ready by 2038, as the Arab Gulf States Insitute in Washington pointed out. The Iraqi side of the railway line will stretch for about 1,200 kilometres and will cross Basrah, Diwaniya, Najaf, Karbala, and Mosul to then reach Turkey. The project involves the construction of new electric railway lines. According to media outlet Zawya, French company Alstom is in charge of the rail project.
Moreover, there is a plan to reopen the section from Mosul to the Turkish city Gaziantep, 300 kilometres from Mersin. This rail line has had a troubled story since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 when a bombing destroyed most of the station in Mosul, forcing its closure. The station was then reopened in February 2010 but closed again in July of the same year. The station was bombed again in 2014, after the Islamic State group took over the country, leading to 80 per cent of it being destroyed.
The Grand Faw Port
The Grand Faw Port will be located roughly 100 kilometres south of Basrah. The first official proposal for the project came in 2010 but the first phase, which included the construction of five main piers was completed only in 2021. Phase two, which is expected to last until 2025, will entail the construction of a container terminal as well as large submarine tunnels connecting to the nearby and shallower Umm Qasr Port. For this project, a contract worth over 2,5 billion euros was awarded in 2020 to Korean company Daewoo Engineering and Construction. The third and final phase of the project will include the construction of around 100 berths.
The master plan for the port was developed by Italian firm Technital, with an estimated total cost of 11,7 billion euros. The new facility is expected to handle 36 million tonnes of containerised freight and 22 million tonnes of dry bulk by 2028. The plan is to further increase these numbers, respectively to 70 million tonnes and 33 million tonnes, by 2038. The project includes two million square metres for terminal container stacking, 600,000 square metres for dry bulk yards, and one million square metres for buildings and warehouses. The double-track railway connected to the port should enable it to move 80 to 90 couples of trains every day.
Erdogan says Turkey-Iraq future railway line can be a ‘new Silk Road’ | RailFreight.com
Don't forget "Ceyhan" (UvM):
Ceyhan's marine transport terminal is the Mediterranean terminus of the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline (the "BTC") which brings crude oil from the landlocked Caspian Sea across Azerbaijan and Georgia, and entering Turkey in the northeast. The pipeline was completed in May 2005. The terminal contains seven storage tanks, a jetty capable of loading two tankers of up to 300,000 tonnes deadweight (DWT) simultaneously, metering facilities, a waste water treatment plant and vapor incineration ("burn-off") facilities.
Ceyhan Terminal is also the destination of Kirkuk-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline.
Transport
Ceyhan Railway Station was opened in 1912 as part of the Berlin-Baghdad Railway. The station is currently served by two regional lines and one long-distance line. Regional lines run from Mersin to ?skenderun and Mersin to ?slahiye; long-distance line runs from Adana to Elaz??. There are three services daily to Adana Central Station to connect to the western destinations; Mersin, Ankara, Karaman and Kayseri.
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Turkiye and Iraq to thrash out oil deal after arbitration ruling ends Kurdish exports
"Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani recently paid an official visit to Turkiye, where he discussed a project to build a land and rail corridor from Basra to the Turkish border."
- Arbitration ruling ordered Ankara to pay $1.4 billion to Baghdad for violating contracts by buying directly from the Kurdistan Regional Government
- Officials from Iraq’s Oil Ministry are expected to travel to Turkiye to negotiate a new method for exporting northern Iraq’s oil
ANKARA: Turkiye is being urged to thrash out a new oil deal with Iraq after a landmark arbitration ruling ordered Ankara to pay $1.4 billion to Baghdad for violating contracts by buying directly from the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Officials from Iraq’s Oil Ministry are expected to travel to Turkiye to negotiate a new method for exporting northern Iraq’s oil after the International Court of Arbitration’s ruling last week in a case stretching back almost a decade.
The ruling has stopped Iraqi Kurdistan’s 450,000 bpd exports, and raised fears of instability and economic crisis in the semi-autonomous region. Exports must now have the consent of Baghdad and both sides in Iraq must strike a larger agreement before oil production can fully resume.
Iraq sued Turkiye in 2014 over direct sales from the KRG and asked for $33 billion in compensation. It has maintained that the KRG cannot use national pipelines to sell oil and that Turkey’s deal with the region violated a 1973 pipeline-transit agreement between the two countries.
Bilgay Duman, coordinator of Iraq studies at the Ankara-based think-tank ORSAM, said that the case reflected the longstanding disagreement between Baghdad and the Kurdish regional administration.
“Turkiye, which will respect the international arbitration ruling, showed its readiness to fulfill its obligations deriving from the international law and to contribute to the de-escalation of the disagreement between its two regional partners,” he told Arab News.
He said that Turkiye’s deal with the KRG from 2013 had an indemnity clause that required any compensation to be paid by Irbil. However, he added: “To what extent the compensation that Ankara will pay to Iraq will be indemnified by the Kurdistan Regional Government is still unknown.”
According to Duman, the disagreement also arose from legal loopholes in Iraq about the control of newly discovered oil fields that were being exploited by the KRG.
Experts say that the ruling will hurt the KRG economy, which made $5.7 billion from oil last year.
“Baghdad appears to be ready to accept financial losses to gain sovereignty over oil,” said Yerevan Saeed, a research associate at the Arab Gulf Institute in Washington. “This has real-life consequences for Kurds in the Kurdistan region. The Kurdistan economy is heavily dependent on oil.”
He said the suspension of oil sales raised both financial and security issues for the KRG.
“The best way forward is for Ankara to play a constructive role by mediating between Irbil and Baghdad,” he said.
“If Turkiye and Baghdad are going to try to bypass the KRG to reach a state-to-state agreement, this could lead to a resurgence of Kurdish nationalism that will stir instability in the region,” he added.
Turkiye meanwhile would need to look to oil from Russia and Iran to fill the hole left by the loss of KRG oil.
Rich Outzen, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said the effects of the arbitration ruling would be felt most keenly in the KRG but also Iraq. “It will hurt Iraq too as long as oil is not flowing. Turkiye and Iraq will work a deal that will involve less than the full penalty in my view,” he told Arab News.
Outzen said that the US, which provides budget support to Baghdad, should press for a quick deal with Ankara and resumption of trade. “Oil costs are affected as world oil prices increase. The latest ruling affects the Iraqi Turkish Pipeline, not trucks, so some may still move by truck,” he said.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani recently paid an official visit to Turkiye, where he discussed a project to build a land and rail corridor from Basra to the Turkish border.
Turkiye and Iraq to thrash out oil deal after arbitration ruling ends Kurdish exports (arabnews.com)
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Against the grain. U.S. agribusiness giant Cargill informed Russia’s Agriculture Ministry that it plans to stop exporting grain from Russia in 2023-24. By volume, Cargill is the sixth largest exporter in the Russian market. It is expected to move about 4 percent (2.2 million tons) of all Russian grain exports in the current season. The decision could increase uncertainty among Russian suppliers and affect the global grain trade, though Russia denies that it will affect Russian exports. Separately, angry at cheap foreign competition, farmers in Bulgaria plan to protest the EU’s extension of duty-free imports of Ukrainian agricultural goods.
Daily Memo: China Warns Taiwan, Russian Grain Disruption - Geopolitical Futures
MOSCOW, March 29 - RIA Novosti. The termination by the Russian "daughter" of the American company Cargill, one of the world's largest suppliers of agricultural products, of grain exports from the Russian Federation in the next agricultural year (from July 1, 2023) will not affect the volume of its supplies abroad, the press service of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation told RIA Novosti.
In Russia, the company began its activities in 1991, opening the first representative office in Moscow. On March 28, the Russian LLC "Cargill" notified the Deputy Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation of plans to stop exporting grain from Russia Oksana Lut, wrote on Wednesday edition of RBC. The press service of the Ministry of Agriculture reported on the receipt by the Ministry from Cargill LLC of the specified notification.
"The termination of its export activities in the Russian market will not affect the volume of domestic grain supplies abroad. The company's assets related to the export of grain will continue to function regardless of whose management they will be under," the press service said.
They also noted that the Ministry of Agriculture is ready to work with all foreign companies whose activities contribute to the development of both the domestic food market of Russia and its export potential. "At the same time, the vacant market niches are promptly occupied by Russian players," the press service emphasized.
In December last year, the newspaper "Kommersant" with reference to the letter of the general director of the company Dmitry Konyaev to the President of Russia To Vladimir Putin reported that one of the world's largest producers of mineral and potash fertilizers "Uralchem" is ready to buy the assets of global grain traders Cargill and Viterra, if they leave the Russian Federation.
RIA Novosti sent cargill inquiries to Uralchem as well.
Russia in 2022 harvested a record grain harvest - 157.676 million tons in weight after refinement, 29.9% more than the previous year's harvest, including increasing the wheat harvest - by 37%, to 104.237 million tons. The Ministry of Agriculture on March 1 reported that the target for grain exports from the Russian Federation in the 2022-2023 agricultural year is about 60 million tons; the export potential for wheat was previously estimated at 39.5 million tons.
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Russian Security Service Detains Wall Street Journal Reporter Evan Gershkovich
The reporter is part of the newspaper’s Moscow bureau; the Journal vehemently denies allegations against him, seeks his immediate release
PHOTO: THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Russia’s main security agency said Thursday it had detained Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich for what it described as espionage.
Mr. Gershkovich, a U.S. citizen and member of the Journal’s Moscow bureau, was detained in the eastern city of Yekaterinburg on Wednesday while on a reporting trip.
The Federal Security Bureau said Mr. Gershkovich, “acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex.” Mr. Gershkovich is accredited to work as a journalist in Russia by the country’s foreign ministry.
Authorities took Mr. Gershkovich to Moscow, where he appeared in court with a state-appointed defense attorney and was ordered held in custody until May 29, said the press service of the court according to TASS.
In Russia, espionage trials are often conducted in secret and it is rare for a court to acquit a defendant. Trials can take months to unfold.
“The Wall Street Journal vehemently denies the allegations from the FSB and seeks the immediate release of our trusted and dedicated reporter, Evan Gershkovich,” the Journal said. “We stand in solidarity with Evan and his family.”
Mr. Gershkovich’s detention and charge on the serious allegation of espionage—rather than lesser charges related to media laws or defaming the military—mean the case is likely to become a high-level diplomatic issue.
In December the U.S. released convicted Russian arms-trafficker Viktor Bout in an exchange for U.S. women’s basketball star Brittney Griner, whom Russian authorities had detained in the days before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
She was found to be carrying hashish oil in her luggage and was later convicted of drug smuggling and possession. She was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony.
The White House and the Kremlin remain entangled over Russia’s detention since 2018 of former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan on espionage charges.
Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, asked Thursday about the chance of an exchange for Mr. Gershkovich, said it was premature to discuss the issue.
“I would not even raise the question right now” because past exchanges involved people already serving sentences, Mr. Ryabkov was quoted by state newswire RIA Novosti as saying. “We’ll see how this story develops further.”
Mr. Gershkovich dropped out of contact with his editors while working in Yekaterinburg on Wednesday afternoon.
A post later appeared on Telegram describing a man with his face hidden being bundled from a restaurant in the city and put into a waiting van. It is unclear whether the person was Mr. Gershkovich.
A lawyer hired by the Journal attempted to find Mr. Gershkovich at the FSB building in Yekaterinburg, but was told authorities had no information about him.
Mr. Gershkovich later reappeared in Moscow, where he was represented by a court-appointed lawyer.
According to TASS, who cited sources, Mr. Gershkovich pleaded not guilty. His case, according to TASS, is considered top secret.
Mr. Gershkovich, 31 years old, joined the Journal in January 2022. He has worked as a reporter in Russia since 2017, first for the Moscow Times and then for Agence France-Presse. Earlier, he was a news assistant in New York for the New York Times. A graduate of Bowdoin College, he most recently wrote about the impact of Western sanctions on Russia’s economy.
Reporting in Russia has become much more difficult since President Vladimir Putin in February last year launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine and then cracked down on domestic dissent.
Russia last March passed a censorship law that makes it illegal to publish what authorities deem false information about military operations in Ukraine. In response, many domestic news outlets ceased operations or left the country and foreign media significantly restricted reporting inside Russia and withdrew many staff.
Mr. Putin in October tightened restrictions across Russian society with a presidential decree granting local governments in the country’s regions new authority to address security concerns. The measures were aimed at maintaining public order, boosting industrial production in support of the military campaign and protecting critical infrastructure, Mr. Putin said at the time.
Media-freedom advocacy groups criticized Mr. Gershkovich’s detention, which is the first of a foreign journalist since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, according to Reporters Without Borders. The France-based group is “alarmed by what looks like retaliation against journalists,” said RSF spokeswoman Pauline Ades-Mevel. “Journalists must not be targeted, even if unfortunately they have been regularly since the invasion.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists is “seriously concerned about Evan Gershkovich’s detention,” said Gulnoza Said, the New York-based group’s program coordinator for Europe and Central Asia. “Russian authorities should immediately release Gershkovich, provide information about the charges against him, ensure he’s not prosecuted for his journalistic work and allow him and other journalists to work freely.”
Since joining the Journal, Mr. Gershkovich has covered a variety of Russia-related topics, including the recent visit by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to Moscow, the inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin and tensions between Kremlin officials and Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russian paramilitary group Wagner.
After initially withdrawing their correspondents from the country early in the war, some organizations have restored their Russia-based reporters, and the Russian Foreign Ministry has continued to extend accreditation to some foreign journalists.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that “those who carry out normal journalistic activities, of course, if they have valid accreditation, they will continue to work.”
Russian Security Service Detains Wall Street Journal Reporter Evan Gershkovich - WSJ
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