Russia has proposed clearing Turkey"s Black...

The idea to clear the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, which serve as the boundary between Europe and Asia, and send oil via the Russia-backed Burgas-Alexandroupolis and the Turkish Samsun-Ceyhan oil pipelines, will be discussed by a bilateral inter-governmental commission and the issue will be raised by the presidents of both counties on May 11-12, the paper said.

Russia argues that the Black Sea straits are overloaded and it takes a long time for ships to pass through them. It is also proposed that both pipelines be managed from a single center.

Oil companies, however, say that oil shipment by sea is cheaper and tankers can take several blends of oil at a time. The idea of Russia"s oil pipeline monopoly Transneft is that the straits can be used only to ship petroleum products while crude can be supplied via the two pipelines.

Experts view the proposal as bold. Burgas-Alexandroupolis is a project between Russia, Greece and Bulgaria to pump Russian and Caspian

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