The TurkStream and Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline projects are essential for Europe with the continent's continuous rising gas demand, Gazprom Deputy Chairman Alexander Medvedev said yesterday.
Speaking at the Russian Energy Week conference in Moscow, Medvedev said that Europe will need 60 billion cubic meters of natural gas by 2025 and 80 billion cubic meters by 2030.
"According to some market experts, this estimate is low. Europe's gas need may surpass 100 billion cubic meters per year in the future," he added. Medvedev noted that the increasing gas demand demonstrates the importance of new gas routes. "Gazprom will set a new record in Europe this year with around 204.5 billion cubic meters of gas exports," he said.
In 2017, Gazprom exported 194.4 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe.
TurkStream is a transit-free gas export pipeline, which will not only stretch across the Black Sea from Russia to Turkey but will further extend to Turkey's borders with neighboring countries. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said late August that the pipeline was already 80 percent complete.
The first line is intended for gas supplies to Turkish consumers, while the second will supply gas to south and southeastern Europe.
The pipeline, which will proceed into Europe either through Bulgaria and Serbia or through Greece and Italy, will become operational at the end of 2019. The world's largest pipe construction vessel, Pioneering Spirit, which is currently laying the second line of the project, has already set a new world record in offshore pipe laying.
Gazprom said that the vessel, which belongs to Swiss-based Allseas Group, laid 6.27 kilometers of pipes per day on Aug. 26, surpassing the average of 4 kilometers per day.
In October, Moscow and Ankara signed an intergovernmental agreement on the construction of two underwater pipelines of the TurkStream project in the Black Sea.
The first line reached the Turkish shore at the end of April after 930 kilometers of deep-water offshore pipe laying from Anapa, Russia, to Kıyıköy, Turkey.
TurkStream's first line will carry 15.75 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Turkey. The project will have a total throughput capacity of 31.5 billion cubic meters with the second line that will go to Europe.
Over the first eight months of the year, Gazprom exported over 133 billion cubic meters of gas to Turkey and the European Union - up 5.6 percent from the same period last year, Gazprom CEO had said in August. The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project is expected to cost around $11 billion to transport 55 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per year to Germany via the Baltic Sea once it becomes operational in early 2020.