Russian President Vladimir Putin has said on last Friday, September 2, 2016, that the Turkish Stream, a Black Sea pipeline project designed to carry Russian gas to Turkey, will eventually be constructed.
To remind, in December 2014, Gazprom and Turkey’s Botas signed the Memorandum of Understanding on constructing the TurkStream gas pipeline.
The pipeline would run 660 kilometers along the old route of South Stream and cover 250 kilometers of a new route toward the European part of Turkey.
However, the project was halted last year after Turkey shut down a Russian warplane on its way to a mission in Syria. Turkey said the plane had violated its airspace.
In an interview given to Bloomberg on September 2, 2016, Putin said that Russia appreciated the fact that Turkey had apologized for the incident, and that he saw clear interest in restoring the two countries relations.
Putin said he hoped that a constructive dialogue could be established as the two nations have a lot of big energy projects – one of them Turkish Stream, or TurkStream.
Russian president said he thought the project would eventually be realized, «at least, the first part, concerning the expansion of transport capacity and increase supply to the Turkish domestic market, but with the ability to transport to European partners,» if the EU shows interest and support for the project.
To remind, just on Wednesday, August 31, 2016, a working meeting was held in Istanbul between Alexey Miller, Chairman of Russian energy giant Gazprom, and Berat Albayrak, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources of the Republic of Turkey.
The parties reached an agreement on the earliest possible completion of the procedure for issuing authorizations required to launch the TurkStream project.
The commercial negotiations on Russian gas supplies to Turkey will continue.
