The construction of the sea part of the Turkish Stream pipeline will be completed in two months, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said.
The construction of the Turkish Stream pipeline is underway," TASS cited him as saying. "The construction of the sea part will be completed in two months," Miller added.
Turkish Stream is a natural gas pipeline currently under construction from Russia to Turkey. It would run from Russkaya compressor station near Anapa in Krasnodar Region across the Black Sea to Kıyıköy on the Turkish Thrace coast. The length of the sea part of the pipe exceeds 900 km. The first line will be intended for the Turkish market, the second - for gas supply to the countries of South and South-Eastern Europe. The capacity of each line reaches 15.75 bln cubic meters of gas per year. The first gas flow is expected to start in December 2019.
The executive vice-president of NewTech Services, professor of the Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas, Valery Bessel, speaking to Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that the progress of the project's construction suggests that its commissioning in the near future is guaranteed. "Like Nord Stream 2, this construction is primarily needed by our partners, in this case Turkey. Turkish companies will earn at the expense of the Turkish Stream at least three times more money than Gazprom," he noted.
In addition, the future of the Turkish Stream is guaranteed by the fact that Gazprom is the most reliable and largest supplier of cheap gas in the macro-region. “Europe has no place to take gas, its own reserves have decreased by 40% over the past 10 years,” Valery Bessel noted.
"U.S. gas reserves, according to the latest BP data, are four times lower than in Russia. Iran, which has the same reserves as Gazprom, is shut down due to U.S. sanctions. Therefore, Europe does not have a real alternative to the Turkish stream and the Nord Stream 2," the professor of the Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas stressed.
A senior analyst of 'Uralsib', Alexei Kokin, also noted that the first line of the pipeline is protected from any political and economic upheavals, and sooner or later Gazprom and Europe will return to the issue of the second line. "Continuation of the pipeline to Europe is still on the agenda, although negotiations are not underway. There are problems associated with issues of how the second line will be implemented and under what conditions, but probably Gazprom will return to it in the future," the expert believes.
