Turkish energy and natural resources minister celebrated the 50th anniversary of Turkish Petroleum Pipeline Corporation (BOTAS) on Thursday, highlighting that the grid operator transported around 14.5 billion barrels of oil through its nearly 3,500-kilometer pipeline network.
Speaking at an event marking BOTAS’ 50th anniversary in the capital Ankara, Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said that the grid operator expanded its operations to include natural gas trading and transportation just a decade after its founding in 1974.
Around 28.5 billion cubic meters of gas was supplied to Türkiye through the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline Project (TANAP) project, which was launched in 2018 and approximately 40 billion cubic meters of gas was delivered from Russia from the beginning of 2020 through the Turkish Stream project.
Bayraktar noted that Türkiye currently has a storage capacity of 5.8 billion cubic meters (bcm), of which 4.6 bcm is in Istanbul’s Silivri District and 1.2 bcm in Tuz Lake storage facility in central Türkiye.
Türkiye aims to reach a total storage capacity of 12 bcm in the next 5 years, allowing the country to store 20% of the natural gas used annually, he added.
The country also has major investments in liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals and floating storage and regasification units (FSRU) which helped the country increase its daily LNG receiving capacity from 30 million cubic meters (mcm) in 2016 to approximately 160 mcm as of today.
‘This achievement has enabled us to efficiently meet half of Türkiye’s natural gas needs with LNG,’ Bayraktar said.
The Turkish minister also said that BOTAS trades natural gas with 34 different countries, including Azerbaijan, Algeria and the US, within the framework of LNG and natural gas agreements.
‘Türkiye has become a leading country that produces its own natural gas, has diversified its supply sources, has export capabilities thanks to its strong infrastructure and supply portfolio and contributes to the supply security of its region and Europe,’ Bayraktar added.
