Azerbaijan increasing gas supplies to Turkey over cessation of imports from Iran

SOCAR Enerji Ticaret AS, which has received the right to import spot pipeline gas from the Turkish Energy Market Regulatory Authority, will supply 4 million cubic meters of gas per day to this country in February through the Turkgozu entry point, Report informs referring to Anadolu Agency.

About 7 million cubic meters of gas per day from Azerbaijan can be supplied to Turkey through Turkgozu.

The need for additional gas supplies came as Iran cut off gas supplies to Turkey from January 20 due to technical problems, while household consumption reached record levels due to weather conditions, and industrial and gas-fired power plants were limited in their ability to meet the growing demand.

Currently, Turkey imports 44 million cubic meters of gas per day through the Turkish Stream pipeline and 47 million cubic meters per day through the Blue Stream.

On the other hand, the country receives 17.3 million cubic meters of gas per day through the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline.

Turkey imports 38 million cubic meters of gas per day through the Egegaz Aliaga liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, 35 million cubic meters per day from the Marmara Ereglisi LNG terminal, 20 million cubic meters per day from FSRU Ertugrul Gazi and 25 million cubic meters per day from FSRU Aktif Liman.

The Lake Tuz underground natural gas storage currently transfers 30 million cubic meters of gas per day to the grid, and the Silivri underground gas storage 15 million cubic meters of gas per day.

Thus, in general, Turkey has an average daily capacity of delivering more than 270 million cubic meters of natural gas to the domestic market.

These opportunities will increase with the resumption of gas supplies from Iran on January 31. If the Iranian line runs at full capacity, daily consumption in Turkey could reach 28 million cubic meters.

Due to increased demand due to snowfall and cold weather, about 288 million cubic meters of natural gas was consumed in Turkey on January 19, breaking a historical record. During this period, an imbalance of supply and demand arose due to the cessation of gas supplies from Iran.

According to the agreement signed in 2001, Turkey imported 6.6 billion cubic meters of gas per year from the Shah Deniz gas field located in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea through the South Caucasus pipeline (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum). Its term expired in April 2021. According to the new Shah Deniz-1 gas agreement signed between Azerbaijan and Turkey last year, a total of more than 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas will be exported to Turkey by the end of 2024.

Azerbaijani gas is supplied to Turkey through the South Caucasus pipeline and TANAP.