The Kremlin said on Thursday that it is still premature to say whether the Turkish Stream natural gas pipeline project involving Turkey will be resumed."It looks like it is still premature to talk about this," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with journalists. "Various (gas pipeline) routes are now being discussed in a framework format.""It's too early to say now what routes will finally be chosen and enter a development stage."

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's letter to President Vladimir Putin expressing regret for Turkey's downing of the Russian military jet in November 2015, has formed the basis for a thaw in relations between the two countries.

Russian energy giant Gazprom did not waste even a day after Erdoğan's letter to act.

"Gazprom is and has always been open for a dialogue on the Turkish Stream," Gazprom's official representative Sergey Kupriyanov was recently quoted as saying by Russian news agency TASS.

The project, which was announced by Putin during his visit to Ankara on Dec. 1, 2015, is a replacement for the South Stream project.

Moscow decided that the negotiations with Bulgaria to carry Russian natural gas to Europe were not working and replaced it with the Turkish Stream to carry gas to Europe via the Turkish-Greek border. However, after November 2015, the Turkish Stream project was left in limbo.