Turkey’s energy minister on Wednesday announced a 10-year deal to receive liquefied natural gas from French firm TotalEnergies as the country, heavily dependent on Russia, seeks to diversify its sources of supply, Agence France-Presse reported.
Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said the deal between Turkish state oil and gas company BOTAŞ and TotalEnergies was signed at Gastech, an industry conference in Houston, Texas.
“The 10-year-deal will start in 2027, and will deliver 16 LNG cargoes of up to 1.6 billion cubic meters per year,” he wrote on social media platform X.
We signed a long-term LNG agreement between our national company BOTAŞ and TotalEnergies at the Gastech 2024 event in Houston.
The 10-year-deal will start in 2027, and will deliver 16 LNG cargoes of upto 1.6 billion cubic meters per year.
Our long-term LNG agreements are of…
— Alparslan Bayraktar (@aBayraktar1) September 18, 2024
Turkey imports natural gas through pipelines from Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia.
Receiving almost half of its gas from Russia, Turkey also buys LNG from suppliers including Qatar, Nigeria, Algeria and the United States.
Bayraktar said Turkey’s long-term LNG agreements were “of great importance in ensuring the energy supply security of both our country and our region, increasing our resource diversity and providing flexibility to our energy supply.”