Turkey takes precautions to avoid gas shortages in winter: Energy Minister

The Turkish energy ministry has taken precautionary measures to ensure the country will not run out of gas for heating this winter amid the global gas shortage, Fatih Donmez, the minister of Energy and Natural Resources said Friday.

He said they have taken steps and will continue to do so to avoid gas supply shortages by filling the underground natural gas storage facilities in the coming weeks ensuring storage is 75% full.

The recent energy crisis, which has seen energy price increases of 200% to 300%, has amplified the importance of domestic and national resources as a lightning rod against this shock wave and has put renewable energy more prominently on the agenda.

It has also exposed the need to take energy-saving measures to avoid wastage. To this end, he said that savings of between 10% and 20% could be made with very simple behavior and attitude changes.

'If we use 1% less in electrical energy, we would save $250 million. If we turn our heating systems down by 1 degree and turn them down to 22 degrees instead of 23 degrees, we will save 1 billion cubic meters of natural gas as a country. Energy efficiency not only contributes to the economy, our budget but also protects our environment.'

He said negotiations are ongoing to obtain further gas supplies, but a deal with Azerbaijan and reassurance from Russian President Vladimir Putin of the possibility of more supplies from Russia should help meet demand.

'We are in a strong position in terms of technical infrastructure. We have international pipelines, underground natural gas storage, LNG and FSRU [Floating Storage Regasification Unit] facilities that will greatly relieve and feed the system,' Donmez said.

He argued that the countries that will be the least exposed to energy price rallies on international markets are the ones that rely more on domestic and national resources, like Turkey, which has increasingly become more self-sufficient in energy.

Turkey saved $1.11 billion within the scope of the National Energy Efficiency Action Plan, Donmez said. 'The financial value of the savings we achieved in 2020 alone was $158 million.”