Earlier this month, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz met his Qatari counterpart, Muhammad al-Sada in Doha to discuss Ankara’s request for a new long-term gas supply contract that would help Turkey further limit its import dependence on Iranian gas. Turkey covered around 16% of its final gas demand from Iran last year according to recently published statistics from the International Energy Agency. In 2011 Iran exported 8.4 bcm to Turkey, making it the country’s second largest supplier of gas after Russia’s Gazprom.
On 9 January Mr Yildiz said that by 2015, Turkey wanted to contract for an additional 6 bcm/year of LNG in order to meet rising demand and offset its dependence on pipeline gas from Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan. Supplies from these three countries amounted to more than 85% of Turkish imports in 2011. Turkey has two long-term LNG contracts, a 4 bcm/y contract with Algeria’s Sonatrach that was renewed last week for another 10 years and a 1.2 bcm/y contract with Nigeria’s NNPC which expires in 2021. In addition to these two contracts Turkey purchased another 1 bcm of LNG from Qatar and Egypt under short-term contracts. (CONTINUED - 579 WORDS)
