http://www.janes.com/regional_news/europe/news/fr/fr040129_1_n.shtml Oil refineries in western Europe have suffered a severe shortage of oil because Russian exports through the
Bosphorus Strait have been drastically reduced in recent days. Turkish authorities say they have cut back
traffic through the narrow waterway from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean because of bad weather and
enforcement of strict regulations governing oil traffic. Really? Foreign Report has another explanation.
The strait is considered to be one of the world's most dangerous waterways when there is bad weather, and
the Turks are paranoid about collisions involving tankers that could cause explosions in the heavily
populated areas around Istanbul. But European oil sources suspect that the slowdown imposed on Russian
oil exports through the strait is part of an effort by the Turkish government to reduce such traffic over time
because it will compete with the US-backed pipeline being laid from the oilfields outside Baku in Azerbaijan,
through Tbilisi, Georgia, to Turkey's loading terminal at Ceyhan on the Mediterranean.
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