There are no problems between Turkey and Russia regarding the establishment of a gas trading center in Istanbul as part of the project for an international gas hub. The Turkish company BOTA and Russia's Gazprom will be equally represented in it, said the head of the Turkish Ministry of Energy, Alparslan Bayraktar.
"We plan to create an operating company with the Russians for an international gas trading center or platform in partnership BOTA - Gazprom in the Istanbul financial center. We are also moving the Turkish Energy Market Regulatory Authority there. We have no problem with the Russians. Gas will be traded in the center and its price will be determined there. In principle, we agree to create a structure where each party will have 50%, but it will take some time,” the Turkish minister told the Milliyet newspaper.
The volume of natural gas consumed by Turkey annually is about 50 billion cubic meters. m. “We are also making efforts to create an infrastructure that will allow us to export 15% of these volumes. Thus, the gas trading center began to become a reality,” Bayraktar noted, adding that Turkey imports natural gas from Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran. He also said that there are five gas storage facilities in Turkey, allowing to store up to 5.8 billion cubic meters of gas, by 2028, the volume of gas storage is planned to increase to 10-12 billion cubic meters.
In October 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin presented the idea of creating a hub on Turkish territory, where the lost volume of transit through the “Nord Stream” gas pipeline would be redirected. Turkish officials say that in terms of infrastructure in the country, almost everything is ready for the project. At the end of December 2023, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak announced that the implementation of the project to create a hub could begin in 2024. The head of the Turkish Ministry of Energy, in turn, announced plans to create a center in Istanbul as part of a project to hub with the participation of the Turkish BOTA and the Russian Gazprom.