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ISTANBUL (AFP)--Turkish officials held talks with oil companies Thursday on ways to reduce growing tanker traffic through the Turkish Straits and lessen the risks posed by congestion in the two waterways. Turkey has long voiced alarm over the environmental and safety threats that maritime traffic, especially oil tankers, pose to the Dardanelles and the Bosporus, at either end of the Marmara Sea that links the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Turkey's Environment Minister Veysel Eroglu said after the talks that 51,424 ships, most of them oil tankers, had passed through the Bosporus Strait, which bisects Turkey's biggest city Istanbul, in 2009 alone. "That is four times more than the Straits of Panama and three times more than the Suez Canal," Eroglu told a press conference. "Clearly, the [Turkish] Straits can no longer bear any increase in cargo ships and tankers. The risk of accidents, environmental accidents, are obvious." During the meeting, Turkish officials presented alternative land routes to ship oil to the companies present, among them BP PLC (BP), Chevron Corp. (CVX), ENI SpA (E), ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM), Shell Dutch PLC (RDSA), Total SA (TOT) and Transneft (TRNFP.RS). Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said two planned pipeline projects--one linking Samsun on Turkey's Black Sea coast to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean, and another linking Burgas in Bulgaria to Alexandroupolis in Greece--could well absorb 50 million metric tons of oil a year. That would equal to one third of the oil volume passing through the Straits, he underlined. He estimated that it would take "three of four years" to build the planned pipelines. The talks however didn't touch upon the creation of a fund to cover the cost of a possible disaster, initially proposed by Ankara, Yildiz said. "The most important thing is that we agreed with the companies on the existence of the problem...We have initiated a process," he added. The two straits constitute the main naval route for Ukrainian and Russian vessels to reach the rest of the world. The Bosporus Strait, the fourth busiest waterway in the world, is particularly difficult to navigate because of its sinuous geography and treacherous currents as well as constant ferry traffic carrying the city's inhabitants between the waterway's western and eastern shore. (END) Dow Jones Newswires July 01, 2010 10:48 ET (14:48 GMT)