Turkey can offer Europe new alternatives for gas supplies
TRT Haber: Turkey Can Offer Europe Its Own Gas from Black Sea Fields
Turkey after discovering new gas reserves in the Black Sea may offer new supply alternatives for a number of European countries, the TV channel TRT Haber reported on Friday.
Turkey in 2020 discovered a large gas field in the Black Sea, the volume of which is estimated at 540 billion cubic meters. Then the President Tayyip Erdogan called the field the largest in the country. He also said that 58 billion cubic meters of gas were discovered in the Black Sea, the estimated reserves were increased to 652 billion and the total gas reserves of the Black Sea reached 710 billion cubic meters, worth $1 trillion at the international markets.
“The signing of the agreement between Turkey and Bulgaria on natural gas trade is a notable development for the EU and the Balkan countries. Ankara’s renewed gas discovered in the Black Sea and its powerful gas infrastructure may offer new alternatives for some European countries,” the channel reported.
Ankara is reportedly already able to supply gas from 15 different countries through pipelines and terminals.
“This position of Turkey is incomparably better than that of the EU member states, which after the war between Ukraine and Russia faced serious problems in terms of security of supply and prices. For example, Germany, which planned to build an LNG terminal in the 1980s but opted for pipeline gas, has only recently been able to realize its first LNG plant,” the channel stressed.
According to the channel, Turkey’s recent deal with Bulgaria on cooperation in gas supply has also attracted the attention of Balkan countries and countries in Eastern and Southeastern Europe, especially Northern Macedonia, Moldova and Romania, to Turkey.
Earlier, Turkey’s Botaş and Bulgaria’s Bulgargaz signed a contract to supply Bulgaria with 1.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year.
“The fact that the next stop of Fatih Dönmez, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, after Bulgaria was North Macedonia, is an even more significant event in this sense,” TRT Haber stressed.
