No gas shortages in Turkey in next two winters: BOTAS

By Nuran Erkul and Muhsin Baris Tiryakioglu

AKSARAY, Turkey (AA) - Turkey’s Petroleum Pipeline Corporation (BOTAS) will ensure that no gas shortages will occur over the next two winters in Turkey with the new gas storage facility launched Friday, according to Burhan Ozcan, BOTAS general director on Friday.

Ozcan spoke to Anadolu Agency during the opening ceremony of Turkey's Salt Lake gas storage facility where storage capacity will increase from 1 billion cubic meters (bcm) to as much as 5 bcm per year.

He said that efforts to ensure Turkey's supply security are ongoing and BOTAS will implement a second Floating Storage Regasification Unit (FSRU) facility.

"With this facility, there will be an output capacity of 20 million cubic meters per day, which will allow gas entry from two different points," Ozcan explained.

He explained that Turkey's gas consumption is around 50 bcm per year from which 10 bcm are distributed to 13 million Turkish households.

"Therefore, we are going to store 12 percent of household consumption here. This has been a long and painful journey," he noted.

- New capacity increases

Ozcan stated that restrictions on natural gas power plants do not cause electricity interruption because BOTAS prioritizes supplies to domestic and industrial consumers.

"When the consumption of natural gas increases to a very high amount, we have shortages especially in our power plants so as not to interrupt the gas of residential and industrial facilities," he said.

He added that because of the simultaneous increase in coal, hydroelectric and renewable resources to the Turkish grid system at such high gas consumption periods, no power cuts have occurred.

Ozcan said that Turkey's current demand for the winter of 2016-2017 was 250 million cubic meters per day of natural gas.

"This was a record. The amount we can store with the Salt Lake storage is around 44 million cubic meters per day," he said.

He added that the giant facility will be able to comfortably support natural gas supplies and provide energy security for the country.

"We will not have any problems related to energy supply in the next chapter of our country," Ozcan said.

Daily capacity of the Marmara Eregli LNG Facility will be increased from 18 million cubic meters to 27 million cubic meters, and at the same time 20 million cubic meters of natural gas can be supplied to the system at the end of 2016 with the FSRU plant that was commissioned in Aliaga.

The BOTAS official noted that the daily capacity of the private sector LNG plant in Aliaga would increase from 24 to 40 million cubic meters this year.

*Murat Temizer contributed to this story from Ankara