The president of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on October 10, 2016, that Turkey has started work on the vast projects to diversify Europe's energy resources and support its energy security.
Turkey and Russia on October 10, 2016, signed an inter-governmental agreement on realizing construction of the planned Turkish Stream gas pipeline to pump Russian gas under Turkish waters in the Black Sea towards Europe. Speaking at a joint press conference with Putin, Erdogan said: «I firmly believe the normalization process between Turkey and Russia will continue swiftly.» He said the new agreement signed between the two countries would now accelerate the Turkish Stream Project.
Speaking at opening of the World Energy Congress in Istanbul, Erdogan said that Turkey is building an additional corridor which will deliver natural gas to Europe. This is the southern gas corridor, which will bring gas from central Asia to Europe.
Turkey is the fourth route for shipping gas to Europe after Norway, Algeria and Russia, he noted. Russia though is also eyeing Turkey as a route to bring gas to Europe, in which case it would compete with the European Commission-backed southern gas corridor which will deliver gas from Azerbaijan to Europe across Turkey.
«Turkey strongly supports the proposed Turkish Stream pipeline. We're working on Turkish Stream project with a positive attitude,» Erdogan said. «The second phase of the Turkish Stream project can be built, depending on developments in European natural gas markets,» he said. Turkish Stream project downsized to two lines with capacity of 31.5bn m³/yr from four lines, all with the same capacity. He also added that Turkmen gas may fit into the the TransAnatolian Pipeline project which will ship Azeri gas to European markets.
Also speaking was Russia's president Vladimir Putin, who said Russia was planning to build Turkish Stream natural gas pipeline. «Russia will be reliable supplier of energy as always. Russia has supplied natural gas to Europe for more than 50 years,» he said during his speech in the opening ceremony.
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