Country Russia
Turkey To Kıyıköy Partners Gazprom | Passes through Black Sea Type natural gas | |
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From Russkaya compressor station | ||
Turkish Stream or TurkStream (Turkish: TürkAkım or Türk Akımı) is a planned natural gas pipeline running from Russkaya compressor station near Anapa in the Southern Russian Krasnodar Region, across the Black Sea to Kıyıköy on the Turkish Thrace coast. Announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on 1 December 2014, during his state visit to Turkey, the proposal is designed to replace the cancelled South Stream project.
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Following the shootdown of a Russian fighter jet by Turkey in November 2015, the project was temporarily halted. However, Russia–Turkey relations were restored in summer 2016 and the intergovernmental agreement for TurkStream was signed in October 2016.
History
The first direct gas pipeline between Russia and Turkey was the Blue Stream, commissioned in 2005. In 2009, Putin proposed a Blue Stream II line parallel to Blue Stream under the Black Sea. The project did not carry through and the South Stream project took the lead, until it was abandoned in 2014.
In November 2015, after the Russian Sukhoi Su-24 shootdown, Russia's Economic Development Minister stated that the TurkStream gas pipeline project falls under the restrictive measures against Turkey. Talks on the project were unilaterally suspended by the Russian side. On 5 December, 2015, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Turkey terminated the TurkStream project, on the grounds of Russian "non-compliance" with Turkish demands surrounding the project.
In late July 2016, following a reconciliation meeting in Moscow, both sides brought the project back on table. On 10 October 2016, Russia and Turkey officially signed the intergovernmental agreement in Istanbul, confirming commitment in the execution of the project.
Technical features
The pipeline will start at the Russkaya compressor station near Anapa. The landing point in Turkey will be Kıyıköy, a village in the district of Vize in Kırklareli Province at northwestern Turkey.
The planned capacity of the pipeline is 31.5 billion cubic metres per annum (1.11 trillion cubic feet per annum) of natural gas.
Market
Turkey is expected to consume about 15.75 billion cubic metres per annum (556 billion cubic feet per annum), the rest of the gas is planned be brought to the Greek-Turkish border to be exported by connecting pipelines to Europe. However, there are concerns that there is not enough capacity to transport this amount from the Greek–Turkish border further to Europe. According to the European Commissioner for Energy Maroš Šefčovič the proposed pipeline exceeds demands of possible customers. The planned follow-on projects to bring Russian gas from TurkStream into Europe include the Tesla Pipeline, to run from Greece to FYROM, Serbia and Hungary, ending at the Baumgarten gas hub in Austria; and Eastring, planned to carry gas north via Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia. Early 2016, Gazprom signed a Memorandum of Understanding with DEPA SA for natural gas deliveries to Europe via ITGI Poseidon (the Interconnector Turkey-Greece-Italy), a southern route to run from Greece to Italy.