Turkey's investment and exploration of gas alone in the South Pars field will cost $8 billion, while this process will last around five years. Photo by Ali Hassanpour

Iran’s natural gas cuts to Turkey have triggered a renewal of efforts by Ankara to diversify its gas supplies.
As reported by Todayszaman.com, as part of this policy Turkey has recently launched a mediation effort to help solve a deep-seated dispute between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan on the status of the Caspian Sea, aimed at clearing the way for Turkmen gas to arrive in Turkey via the same route used in the transfer of gas from the Azeri Shah Deniz field.
Both Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan welcomed Turkish mediation efforts, said Turkish Energy Ministry sources.
Taking into consideration the ongoing sovereignty dispute among the five littoral states (Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Russia and Kazakhstan) over the oil- and gas-rich Caspian Sea, Turkish mediation efforts between the two countries may become much more difficult, noted Turkish energy experts speaking to Today’s Zaman.
However the same experts recalled that there are some oil and gas fields near the shores of both Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan that both countries claim, and that this is not necessarily linked to the overall Caspian Sea legal dispute, but rather a bilateral dispute in which Turkish mediation efforts could hold some sway.
Iran halted its gas supply to Turkey earlier this month, citing unusual weather conditions and a pricing dispute with Turkmenistan. This coincided with a visit paid by Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler to Washington on January 8, accompanying Turkish President Abdullah Gul.
Returning from Washington after talks with US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, Guler told CNN Turk on January 11 that Turkey and the US had decided to work jointly on exploring Iraqi oil and gas potential.
But as the recent row between Iraqi Kurdish officials and the central Iraqi government in Baghdad has shown, an oil and gas law--still pending approval by the Iraqi parliament--that would open the way to petroleum exploration in Iraq is not likely to see implementation in the near future.
The Iraqi government recently announced that earlier oil deals reached between the regional Kurdish administration in northern Iraq and foreign oil companies are invalid.
Renewed Turkish efforts to bring Turkmen gas to Turkey while planning to explore Iraqi energy resources are not expected to remedy Turkey’s energy crisis in the medium term, as Turkey is reliant on foreign sources for almost 80 percent of its gas needs. Iran is Turkey’s second-biggest gas supplier after Russia.
In July 2007 Turkey signed new deals with Iran, estimated at around $3.5 billion, which included the exploration of Iran’s South Pars gas fields. But as a senior Turkish bureaucrat asserted recently, behind Iran’s decision to stop supplying Turkey with gas lay its frustration over the Turkish delay in making the Pars agreement effective.
Yusuf Gunay, then-president of the Energy Market Regulatory Agency (EPDK), also stated during an interview with Zaman on January 9 that the United States lay behind the Turkish delay. The US has on one hand been warning its close ally Turkey not to engage in investments in Iran, noting that it could fall afoul of the US 1996 sanctions act. On the other hand, the US is pushing Turkey to be active in the resolution of disputes between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan over their energy resources.
It has been estimated that Turkey’s investment and exploration of gas alone in the South Pars field will cost around $8 billion, while this process will last around five years. Turkish energy experts who oppose fresh Turkish energy deals with Iran claim that the Pars gas deal would therefore not remedy Turkey’s immediate energy crisis.
However, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters on January 14 during a visit to Madrid that Turkey would go ahead with new deals with Iran. When reminded of opposition from both the US and Israel over Turkey’s new energy deals with the Iranians, Erdogan stated that it was not the US and Israel who would supply Turkey with gas.

The great green awakening is making company after company take a serious look at its own impact on the environment.

In the lobby at the London headquarters of Marks & Spencer, one of Britain’s leading retailers, the words scroll relentlessly across a giant electronic ticker.
They describe progress against “Plan A“, a set of 100 worthy targets over five years. The company will help to give 15,000 children in Uganda a better education; it is saving 55,000 tons of CO2 in a year; it has recycled 48 million clothes hangers; it is tripling sales of organic food; it aims to convert over 20 million garments to Fairtrade cotton; every store has a dedicated “Plan A“ champion, Economist.com reported.
The M&S ticker says a lot about the current state of what is commonly known as corporate social responsibility (CSR). First, nobody much likes the CSR label. A year ago M&S launched not a CSR plan but Plan A (“because there is no Plan B“). The chief executive’s committee that monitors this plan is called the “How We Do Business Committee“.
Second, the scrolling list shows what a vast range of activities now comes under the doing-good umbrella. It spans everything from volunteering in the local community to looking after employees properly, from helping the poor to saving the planet. With such a fuzzy, wide-ranging subject, many companies find it hard to know what to focus on.
Third, the M&S ticker demonstrates that CSR is booming. Whether through electronic screens, posters or glossy reports, big companies want to tell the world about their good citizenship. They are pushing out the message on their websites and in advertising campaigns. Their chief executives queue up to speak at conferences to explain their passion for the community or their new-found commitment to making their company carbon-neutral.
A survey carried out for this report by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister company of The Economist, shows corporate responsibility rising sharply in global executives’ priorities.
None of this means that CSR has suddenly become a great idea. This newspaper has argued that it is often misguided, or worse. But in practice few big companies can now afford to ignore it.
Beyond the corporate world, CSR is providing fertile ground for think-tanks and consultancies. Governments are taking an ever keener interest: in Britain, for example, the 2006 Companies Act introduced a requirement for public companies to report on social and environmental matters. And the United Nations promotes corporate responsibility around the world through a New York-based group called the Global Compact.
Business schools, for their part, are adding courses and specialized departments to keep their MBA students happy. “Demand for CSR activities has just soared in the past three years,“ says Thomas Cooley, the dean of New York University’s Stern Business School.
Why the boom? For a number of reasons, companies are having to work harder to protect their reputation--and, by extension, the environment in which they do business. Scandals at Enron, WorldCom and elsewhere undermined trust in big business and led to heavy-handed government regulation.
An ever-expanding army of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) stands ready to do battle with multinational companies at the slightest sign of misbehavior. Myriad rankings and ratings put pressure on companies to report on their non-financial performance as well as on their financial results. And, more than ever, companies are being watched.

It is infrastructure investments such as the expressway in Uttar Pradesh that are sustaining global investorsÕ appetites for Indian investment opportunities.

Twenty leading global and Indian infrastructure construction companies are bidding for the contract to build a $10 billion eight-lane expressway in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
This expressway will link the less developed eastern part of the state with the Indian capital, New Delhi, 1,047 kilometers (651 miles) away. This is the single largest standalone expressway project being constructed in India, reported Gfmag.com.
Among the companies that have applied for pre-qualification are Macquarie, Australia’s largest investment bank, which has teamed up with Gammon Infrastructure Projects, a leading Indian company. Other contenders for the project include such large Indian companies as Larsen & Toubro, Reliance Energy and Omaxe. Other global companies bidding are Canada’s SNC-Lavalin and companies from Australia, Malaysia and the Middle East.
It is infrastructure investments such as the expressway in Uttar Pradesh that are sustaining global investors’ appetites for Indian investment opportunities. Private equity investors are citing a $500 billion infrastructure investment plan and GDP growth of 9 percent as key factors for their sustained interest in India.
The Carlyle Group has forecast that the Indian private equity market will expand by 40 percent in 2008. In 2007, $4.2 billion worth of private equity deals were completed in India, a 55 percent increase over deals done in 2006 and making India the second-largest market for private equity in the Asia-Pacific region after Australia.
Private equity funds have reportedly invested a total of $12.9 billion in India so far.
However, the finance ministry’s mid-year review of the economy for 2007-08, which was unveiled in the Indian parliament in the first week of December, sounded a note of caution on capital inflows.
It warned that large and sustained capital inflows over the past few years are presenting the country with short-term challenges as it tries to absorb inflows without endangering price stability and consequently economic growth.
The rupee strengthened by 12 percent against the US dollar in 2007 to reach a 10-year high, the rise being due primarily to large capital inflows. The combination of a higher rupee, rising interest rates and five years of double-digit wage growth is likely to affect corporate profitability going forward.

Members of the euro club are obliged to restrain borrowing and spending, with a promise to limit budget deficits to 3 percent of gross domestic product and a pledge to keep trimming shortfalls by 0.5 percentage point per year.
According to Bloomberg.com, Italy’s deficit probably declined to about 2.4 percent of GDP in 2007, down from 4.4 percent a year earlier. That would mean the nation met the 3 percent target for the first time since qualifying to join the euro with a series of accounting tricks that might at best be described as creative.
Italy, though, has been lucky rather than good in recent years. A much-touted revival of its luxury-goods sales owes more to a robust global economy enriching label-obsessed bling buyers in Russia and China than to any restructuring efforts to make the textile, shoe, sofa and handbag industries more competitive.
That luck is about to run out. A Merrill Lynch & Co. January survey of 195 investment firms managing $671 billion showed that almost one in five see a global recession as likely or very likely in the coming year. At home, the Bank of Italy this week slashed its 2008 growth forecast to just 1 percent, down from the 1.7 percent expansion predicted by the central bank in July.
Italian business confidence is at its lowest level in two years, according to a December survey by the Rome-based Isae Institute. Figures this week showed that industrial production slumped 0.9 percent in November, its third consecutive decline and weaker than the 0.3 percent increase expected by economists in a Bloomberg News survey.
That report prompted Chiara Corsa, an economist at Unicredito Italiano SpA in Milan, to cut her Italian growth forecast for the final three months of 2007 to zero, from 0.2 percent previously, and warn of a possible contraction.
Tax evaders cost the nation about 100 billion euros ($148 billion) per year. While Italy succeeded in clawing back about 20 billion euros in both 2006 and 2007, the law of diminishing returns is kicking in, adding a hollow ring to claims from Finance Minister Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa that restoring such lost revenue will pay for Prodi’s promises.
With the Italian lira no longer available, investors are turning to the debt and derivatives markets to cast doubt on the nation’s creditworthiness. Italy currently pays about 37 basis points more than Germany to borrow for 10 years in the bond market, up from an average of 26 basis points in 2007 and 22 basis points in the first half of last year.
The debt of other countries has also suffered as the global credit crunch makes investors more risk-averse. Spreads on 10- year Spanish bonds have widened to 18 basis points more than German debt, from a 9-basis-point average in 2007. Greece’s spread has increased to 34 basis points from 27 last year.
Because Italy is Europe’s biggest sovereign debtor, though, any rise in its borrowing costs hurts its finances more than those of its peers. The nation spends 5 percent of its GDP servicing debt, half of which is in foreign hands.