Turkey to replace Iranian oil imports with Russian

Turkish Minister for Energy and Natural Resources Taner Yildiz said that Ankara was negotiating oil imports with Saudi Arabia, Libya and Russia, Trend reports.

Turkish oil imports dropped by 22% to 1.4 million tons in July 2012, compared with the previous month, as stated by EPDK. Oil imports in January-July 2012 dropped by 1.8% to 10.6 million tons, compared with the same period in 2011.

Turkey imports 8 million tons of oil and 8 billion cubic meters of gas from Iran annually.

Tendencies in the first half of the year reducing Turkish oil imports from Iran changed in August. Iran increased exports to China, South Korea, Japan, Turkey and India. Ankara was importing 48,000 barrels of oil from Iran daily in July and over 200,000 barrels daily in August.