Türkiye to start Nakhchivan this week

Türkiye will start the export of natural gas to Azerbaijan in Nakhchivan this week.

“We start to export natural gas to Nakhchivan. The Iğdır Nakhchivan pipeline has been completed. This week we will have provided this natural gas pipeline, a new connection for Türkiye,” said the Minister of Energy and Nature Resources, Alparslan Bayraktar.

He noticed that Türkiye, alongside Bulgaria and Greece, would give another point to his natural gas exports.

The founding of the Iğdır Nakhchivan natural gas pipeline was laid at the end of 2023 with the participation of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the President of Azerbaijani, Ilham Aliyev.

The pipeline, which runs from the easternmost province of Iğdır to Sederek in the Nakhchivan of the West Azerbaijan, provides for the region to deliver natural gas with an annual capacity of 500 million cubic meters (MCM).

In an interview with the Anadolu Agency (AA), Bayraktar also said that he was met as part of his contacts in Moscow with Russian deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak and the Russian Minister of Energy Sergey Tsivilyov.

Meeting with rosatom

“In addition to our current cooperation and how we can improve our trading volume, we also have new problems on the agenda,” he said.

He mentioned that the coming year will mark the next year since Russia with the supply of Torkiye and said: “Therefore, this is also an important milestone for us, and while we are driving our cooperation in natural gas, the provision of programs is provided to Torkiye under the cheaper conditions, and of course the natural gas trade that we gave in toweryy in toweryy.

The minister also said that Russia is “also interested” to build the nuclear power plant in Sinop, and added that their main focus was on putting the first reactor in Akkuyu into operation as soon as possible and that they had discussions with rosatom on this topic.

Bayraktar, who pointed out that Torkiye is a very large market for natural gas, also said that with its location and infrastructure investments, it is able to help countries in the region with the safety of care.

In addition, he emphasized that Torkiye has now become a natural gas producer with working in the Black Sea, and said that they also work to increase the capacity of the connections to neighboring countries. “In this sense, there are serious opportunities,” he added.

Arrival of Turkmengas

Bayraktar rated the arrival of gas from Turkmenistan and said that this gas is currently being brought to Torkiye via Swaps via Swaps.

“This agreement is very important for the security of pension from Türkiye and for Torkiye to increase and diversify its gas resources,” he added.

The turkmen gas is also important for the reduction of natural gas costs, said the minister, which suggests that it is delivered to a “competition price” in economic terms.

Meanwhile, Bayraktar pointed out that they want to increase the volume in question and said: “On medium and long -term transport of Turk mengas to Türkiye and Europe via a pipeline over the Caspian Sea, the most ideal and correct method in terms of technical and commercial aspects.”

The minister touched the Nakhchivan gas supply and said that the ceremony was planned with the participation of Erdoğan and Aliyev.

“This week we will have made this natural gas pipeline available, a new connection to Torkiye. Nakhchivan's gas requirements is now being met by Torkiye,” he added.

Iraq-Türkiye oil pipeline

On the topic of the expected restart of crude oil, Iraq flows through the pipeline, said Bayraktar that Torkiye wanted to do it with maximum capacity, and repeated that it was ready for the operation for almost 1.5 years.

The exports were discontinued by Torkiye in March 2023 according to an arbitration process by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). The ICC ordered Ankara to pay Baghdad damages of 1.5 billion US dollars, which were not authorized by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) between 2014 and 2018.

Since the end of 2023, Türkiye has said that it is ready to resume operations in the pipeline and to wear oil exports from the Semi-Autonomous Kurdistetin region of Iraq.

Bayraktar said Reuters last month that Ankara had not received a confirmation of the resumption of rivers. Last weekend, the Iraqi Ministry of Oil said that the procedures were completed to enable oil flows and asked the KRG to provide the state organization for the marketing of oil (SOMO) for exports to resume the state organization.

But on Friday, eight international oil companies that worked in the Kurdistan region in Iraq gave, despite an announcement from Baghdad, that the restart was imminent.

“This pipeline has been ready for 1.5 years. We want the Türkiye-Iraq pipeline, especially the two pipelines of 650 kilometers from our silopi to Ceyhan, to be used,” said Bayraktar.

“We want part of the oil to go through this line into the refinery in Kırıkkale and also via ships via Ceyhan to refineries in Torkiye or to various refineries in the world so that the capacity of the line can be used at the maximum level,” he added.

Bayraktar also said that a planned trade route project with Türkiye and Iraq called Development Road Project contained the construction of a pipeline that reached the Persian Gulf for the Iraqi oil flows to go to the global markets via Torkiye.

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