Minister Bayraktar Speaks at Gastech2024

Speaking at Gastech 2024 in Houston, US, Minister Bayraktar noted that LNG from the US plays a big role for the Turkish market and said, “The gas that will come from different countries through pipelines and our own production. So, we will create this Turkish Blend to offer to Europe.”

Speaking at the Ministerial Panel

Minister Bayraktar attended the opening ceremony of Gastech 2024 Fair and Conference and delivered a speech at the ministerial panel. In the panel titled “Energy Security and Diversity in Times of Geopolitical Uncertainty”, Bayraktar explained Türkiye's energy projection and noted that meeting energy demand, reducing foreign dependency and realizing energy transformation are three important challenges for Türkiye.

Natural Gas for 2.6 Million Households

Bayraktar stated that for this reason, they try to carry out long-term programs “After the discovery of natural gas in the Black Sea in 2020, we were able to produce 7.5 million cubic meters of gas per day in less than 4 years. This means that we can meet the natural gas of 2.6 million households from our own gas.”

Infrastructure Investments

Emphasizing that they have invested heavily in underground natural gas storage facilities, regasification units, in other words infrastructure, Bayraktar said, “We have increased our regasification capacity by almost 5-fold and so our entire supply portfolio is changing and transforming. We are moving from long-term pipeline contracts to more flexible long-term LNG contracts. This is creating a big change in the market. With these infrastructure investments, we offer more competitive solutions to the market.” 

Bayraktar said that Türkiye has a very ambitious renewable energy program and added: “We want to increase our renewable energy installed capacity to 100 gigawatts in wind and solar by 2035. It is currently 30 gigawatts, it will increase almost 2.5 times.”

We Will Include Nuclear in the Energy Mix

Stating that they want to include nuclear energy in the energy mix with large-scale conventional nuclear power plants and SMRs, Bayraktar said that they are also working on the exploration and extraction of critical minerals and increasing transmission capacity to integrate more renewable energy into the system.

Europe's 4th Largest Gas Market

Referring to Türkiye's important role in the energy supply security of South Eastern Europe, Bayraktar said: “We started to produce our own gas, but at the same time we invested heavily in pipelines, international projects, and our regasification capacity. We are now able to bring more gas than we need. Türkiye has the 4th largest gas market in Europe with a consumption of 50 billion cubic meters(bcm). With this infrastructure, we are a reliable supplier to neighboring countries and other regions around the world.”

The Capacity Increase We Need to Make

Underlining that they can bring approximately 75 bcm of natural gas to Türkiye, Bayraktar continued as follows: We can easily export the 25 bcm of excess natural gas to the European markets. All we need to do is to increase the interconnection capacities with neighboring countries Greece and Bulgaria. So, we can bring this gas to the European markets. We believe that if we can create a balance between producer, transporter and consumer countries, we can achieve a long-term and successful energy cooperation. I call it a Turkish blend. We can bring gas from many different countries. US LNG plays a big role for the Turkish market. Gas coming from different countries through pipelines and our own production. So we will get the Turkish Blend to offer to Europe.