Page 59 - TURKRptNov19

opened a representative office in Ankara​. Commenting on Socar AQS’s likely future operations in Turkey, the company’s director general Ramin Isayev said it would drill 40 wells to expand the storage of the Salt Lake Natural Gas Storage Facility, located in central Anatolia.
The facility has capacity to store 600mn cubic metres (mcm) of gas and has another 600 mcm of capacity under construction with plans to reach 5.4 bcm by 2023-24.
Gazprom starts filling TurkStream with gas​. Russia began filling the first of the TurkStream gas pipeline’s two strings with gas on October 18, in preparation for its operational launch.
“This is the final step in the commissioning of the pipeline,” project operator South Stream Transport, a subsidiary of Gazprom, said in a statement.
TurkStream runs from Russia for 930km along the bed of the Black Sea, terminating in Turkey’s western Thrace region. Its first string will supply up to 15.75bn cubic metres of gas per year to Turkish consumers, while its second will run further, passing through Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary.
Gazprom broke ground on the project in May 2017, after hiring Swiss-based Allseas to lay the pipe, and work on both strings’ offshore sections was completed in November last year.
South Stream transport confirmed that the first string was still due on stream by the end of this year, without disclosing a firm date. Construction of its receiving terminal in Turkey is in its “final stages”, and Turkish gas transmission operator Botas is building an onshore pipeline connecting the string with the country’s national network, it said.
A joint venture between Botas and Gazprom is also working on another onshore line to carry gas from the second string to the Turkish border with Bulgaria. The string's launch is anticipated in 2020 at the earliest.
Gazprom is also currently filling its 38 bcm per year Power of Siberia pipeline to China with gas. The pipeline is due to start up on December 1, although it is not expected to operate at full capacity for several years.
Meanwhile, Gazprom’s third major pipeline project, Nord Stream 2, is running on schedule and was 83% complete as of early October. But delays seem likely ahead, as Gazprom is still waiting for approval from Denmark to run the pipeline through its waters. The company is considering rerouting Nord Stream 2 to bypass Danish territory, but doing so means that the 55 bcm per year pipeline will fail to start up by the end of this year as planned, and incur hundreds of dollars in extra costs.
No Azerbaijani gas will flow to the European Union market until at least October 2020​. And a gas supply company in Azerbaijan may end up facing a big bill because of the delays. That much became clear on November 1 after the head of the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) consortium gave an interview to Reuters.
59​ TURKEY Country Report​ November 2019 ​ ​www.intellinews.com