President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Saturday said Ankara and Moscow reached an agreement to reduce the price of the natural gas imported from Russia by 10.25 percent after long negotiations.
Speaking at a rally of the ruling Justice And Development Party (AK Party) in eastern Erzurum province, Erdoğan said Turkey demanded a discount on the price of the natural gas from Russia via the Blue Stream and the Western Line in 2015.
The President said Turkey will also get a refund of $1 billion for the purchases made in the last two years when Gazprom initially agreed on the discount in early 2016.
Gazprom later on unilaterally canceled the 10.25 percent discount applied to natural gas and Turkey applied to the international court of arbitration to resolve the dispute.
Turkey, the second biggest consumer of Russian gas after Germany, imports around 30 billion cubic meters of gas from Russia annually via the two pipelines.
The private sector in Turkey imports 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas per year, representing over 30 percent of Russia's gas exports to Turkey. Out of 48 bcm, 38 bcm was imported by the state-owned crude oil and natural gas pipeline and trading company, BOTAŞ.
