Turkish Stream pipeline may be connected to TANAP

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has offered to connect the Turkish Stream pipeline to the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), via which Azerbaijani gas will be delivered to Europe.

According to him, Ankara will buy only 16 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per year via the Turkish Stream. The remaining volume of Russian gas can be exported through Turkey via TANAP by connecting it to the Turkish Stream.

“TANAP is a priority project for Turkey,” Cavusoglu noted.

A leading analyst of the National Energy Security, a lecturer at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Igor Yushkov, said recently that it would be advantageous for Russia to join the project, so that the gas heading from Russia to Turkey could get into the pipe with the Azerbaijani gas. "In such circumstances, the Europeans will not be able to put a spoke in Gazprom's wheel, because our gas will be supplied by an international pipeline," he noted.