It has been agreed that Türkiye will be a natural gas hub in discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Wednesday.
"Türkiye will be a hub for natural gas as well. In our last meeting, we agreed with Putin on this issue. We will create a hub here with Turkish gas coming from Russia," Erdoğan said at the Justice and Development (AK) Party's group meeting in the capital Ankara.
"And in his own words, Putin announced to the world that 'Europe can get its natural gas from Türkiye,'" Erdoğan added.
Erdoğan said concerns are rising in Western countries facing energy crises, adding that Türkiye "does not have such a problem."
Last week, on the sidelines of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia summit in the Kazakh capital Astana, Erdoğan held a closed-door meeting with Putin, who had proposed building a natural gas hub in Türkiye.
Putin has floated the idea of exporting more gas via the TurkStream gas pipeline running beneath the Black Sea to Türkiye, touting the country as the best route for redirecting gas supplies to the European Union after the Nord Stream pipeline leaks.
Erdoğan previously said Russian and Turkish energy authorities would work together to designate the best location for the potential gas distribution center, adding that Türkiye’s Thrace region, bordering Greece and Bulgaria, appeared to be the best spot.
Carrying natural gas from Russia to Türkiye and further into Europe, the TurkStream was formally launched in January 2020.
The pipeline, which allows Moscow to bypass Ukraine as a transit route to Europe, carries Russian gas to Southern Europe through the Black Sea and Türkiye.
It has an annual capacity of 31.5 billion cubic meters (bcm) and consists of two 930-kilometer (577-mile) offshore lines and two separate onshore lines that are 142 and 70 kilometers long.
The first line with a capacity of 15.75 bcm is designated for supplies to Türkiye’s domestic customers. The downlink to Türkiye carries gas to several European countries, including Serbia and Hungary.
Nord Stream 1
Meanwhile, tiny amounts of gas briefly appeared in the Russian Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Wednesday, website data showed, weeks after it was ruptured in the Baltic Sea by what investigating teams said was suspected sabotage caused by explosions.
Gas flows were at 102 kilowatt-hours per hour (kwh/h) from 7 a.m. to 8.a.m. CET (5 a.m. to 6 a.m. GMT) on Oct. 19 from zero, and at 119 an hour later, the data showed. The data subsequently showed that the flows dropped back to zero starting from 0900 CET.
Before the stoppage in late August, Nord Stream 1 carried some 14 million kilowatt hours per hour of Russian gas.
Nord Stream's operator did not immediately respond to a request for comment and no explanation was immediately available.
Small amounts of gas in the idle Nord Stream 1 pipelines have been detected before, including in early September. Industry sources attributed this to glitches in metering facilities.
Dwindling flows of gas from Russia, which once supplied 40% of Europe's needs, has left the European Union struggling to unite over how to respond to surging prices that have deepened a cost-of-living crisis for families and businesses.