Total inflow to Turkish gas system down 6.33% in 2019

By Murat Temizer

ANKARA (AA) - Natural gas inflow to Turkey's gas network saw a year-on-year decrease of around 6.33% to 46.83 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2019, according to data from the Turkish Petroleum Pipeline Corporation (BOTAS) on Saturday.

In 2018, around 50 bcm of natural gas entered the Turkish natural gas system, the majority of which, at around 49.33 bcm, was consumed.

As Turkey's natural gas export volume is very low, the total consumption is expected to be close to the amount of inflow.

In 2017, Turkey saw the highest inflow level in the country's history at 53.86 bcm.

According to the Twitter account of Turkey's Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Donmez, last year the share of local and renewable resources in electricity production amounted to 62%.

Last year, the highest figure for natural gas inflow was seen in the month of January with 6.22 bcm and the lowest was in June with 2.49 bcm.

- 2019 starts with record high gas consumption

Turkey's daily natural gas consumption reached a historic record high at 245 million cubic meters (mcm) on Jan. 8 last year, according to Donmez.

The country beat the previous record made on Feb. 14, 2017 when consumption totaled 243 mcm.

The energy minister explained that measures were taken to ensure natural gas supply security without any downtime or cuts during the extreme cold weather in January that triggered a large increase in gas demand.

Turkey's gas network has expanded with additional gas provision to 40 more regions to cover 550 settlements in total.

The transmission and gas distribution network, which exceeds 162,000 kilometers, extended to cover 81% of the population.

By the end 2019, the country's natural gas storage capacity amounted to 3.44 bcm while the daily natural gas transmission system reached a capacity of 318 mcm.

Turkey imports gas via pipelines from Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran. In 2018, Ankara imported 23.6 bcm of gas from Russia, 7.9 bcm from Iran and 7.5 bcm from Azerbaijan. The remaining 22.5% came in the form of LNG.

Turkey's LNG imports reached a historic record high of 7.14 bcm in the first half of 2019, according to Turkey's Energy Market Regulatory Authority's (EMRA) data.

The share of LNG in natural gas imports surpassed 30% for the first time in the January-June period of 2019 out of a total of 23.29 bcm of natural gas imports.

Lower LNG prices and abundant surplus supplies were contributing factors to the rise in the share of LNG in the country's imports last year.