Turkey
’s energy and natural resources
minister said on April 21 that
Turkey
was willing to purchase natural gas
from
Qatar
to meet its growing natural gas needs.
Energy Minister Taner Yıldız said
Turkey was
trying to meet its natural gas needs with supplies from many countries, in
return for reasonable prices. Yıldız had also hinted on April 13 that the
government was interested in swapping electricity for Iraqi natural gas and
would build a power plant on the Northern Iraqi border.
“We foresee purchasing 3 billion cubic meters of
natural gas from
Qatar
this year. We will start buying
natural gas from Qatar if we agree on the price,” Yıldız told reporters in
Doha, Qatar, saying that he was not sure if the natural gas would be imported
by the state natural gas distributor BOTAŞ or by the private sector, and that
those details would be ironed out later. Yıldız is accompanying Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during his visit to
Qatar
.
Yıldız said
Turkey
and
Qatar
would sign a framework agreement if
they reach a compromise, and that they were still at the negotiation stage. This
stage could take one to one and a half months, according to Yıldız.
Turkey
has also signed a deal with a
Canadian company to begin talks about building a nuclear power plant in
Turkey
, Yıldız said. “An agreement [on the
construction of the power plant] will be signed if we reach a compromise,
otherwise we will not sign an agreement.”
An agreement was signed between
Turkey
’s state-owned power company, EÜAŞ,
and
Canada
’s Candu in
Istanbul
on April 20 to carry out a six-month
feasibility study for a nuclear plant at the
Black Sea
port
of
Sinop
.