The Turkish pipeline project was publicly announced during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Turkey on December 1 after the cancellation of the South Stream project. “Everything will depend on the Turkish Stream as we’ve submitted our agreement project to the Turkish side”.
Advertisement
Ankara said in February it obtained the discount on 28-30 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas it buys from Russian Federation and that it should have been enacted as of January 2015.
Russia is now ready to sign only an agreement to build the first section of Turkish Stream, according to Russian news sources.
Another important difficulty on the negotiation table is the issue of the pipeline’s integration.
“According to the information I have, discount agreements have been reached by Gazprom and Botas”, he said answering a question whether there are differences between the companies on the size of the Russian gas discounts. Earlier Gazprom consultant Alexander Rahr said that Turkey is geographically a natural transit country for Europe, and it’s most profitable to route gas supplies via its territory.
Advertisement
The first phase of pipeline was expected to be operational by 2017 and to carry 15.75 bcm of gas. It will deliver 47 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe, while the remaining amount is to be allocated for Turkey’s domestic use.
