Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday revealed that Türkiye and Russia will work together to set up a natural gas distribution center in Türkiye’s Thrace region, bordering Greece and Bulgaria.
“Together with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, we instructed our Energy and Natural Resources Ministry and the relevant institution on the Russian side to work together. They will do this work there,” Erdogan told the media on the presidential plane while coming back to Türkiye from a trip to Kazakhstan.
The decision comes after the Turkish president met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia summit in the Kazakhstan capital Astana. During the closed-door meeting, the Russian president had proposed to build a natural gas distribution center, touting Türkiye as the finest route for redirecting natural gas provisions to the European Union.
Thrace region in northwestern Türkiye near the Greek border would be the “most important place for this business”, according to President Erdogan.
“Wherever the most appropriate place is, we will hopefully have established this distribution center there. We have a national distribution center, but of course, now this will be an international distribution center,” said the Turkish president.
Turkish President told the reporters that the country’s energy ministry and Russian energy firm, Gazprom will initially conduct a feasibility report.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the Russian proposal needs “to be studied well”.
Russian gas supplies to Europe were curtailed by the western nations immediately after Moscow’s invasion of Kyiv in February. Russia and Türkiye have two active pipelines out of which one, called the ‘TurkStream’, goes through the Black Sea and across western Türkiye near Thrace.
Earlier this week, Putin proposed to step up gas flows to Europe via a link of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea. However, Germany rejected the proposal.