Russia’s top gas producer Gazprom is ready for a dialogue on a potential
resumption of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline project, the company’s official
representative Sergey Kupriyanov told TASS Monday.
"Gazprom is and has always been open for a dialogue on the Turkish
Stream," he said when commenting reports on potential rebuilding of
relations with Turkey.
Earlier on Monday Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered his
apologies for the death of the pilot of the downed Russian Su-24 plane in
November 2015 to President Putin.
On December 1, 2015 the Russian government suspended the work of the mixed
intergovernmental Russian-Turkish commission on trade and economic cooperation,
which was headed by Alexander Novak for the Russian side, and which intended to
consider the Turkish Stream gas pipeline project. On December 3, Novak said the
Turkish Stream construction project had been put on hold.
In February 2016, Gazprom’s board member Oleg Aksyutin said the project’s
timeline would be clarified as soon as the relations between Russia and Turkey
were normalized and intergovernmental agreements were put on paper.
On December 1, 2014 the Russian gas producer Gazprom and the Turkish
company Botas signed a memorandum of understanding on construction of a gas
pipeline from Russia to Turkey via the Black Sea. The initial plan implied that
the capacity of 4 lines of the pipeline would total 63 bln cubic meters of gas
per year, of which 16 bln would be supplied to Turkey and 47 bln - to a new gas
hub on the Turkish-Greek border.
(ITAR-TASS)