The Kremlin said on Thursday that Turkey was “very interested” in Russia’s proposal to turn that country into a distribution center for Russian gas to Europe.
“The Turkish side has responded with great interest to this Putin initiative and leaders have issued instructions to quickly investigate this matter.”Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said after a meeting in Kazakhstan between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Erdogan.
Putin has formally suggested Erdogan establish a Russian gas distribution center in Turkey to supply European countries, which would also allow the creation of a platform to regulate energy prices deemed “exorbitant”.
The Russian leader argued that Russia and Turkey can jointly create “a platform not only for gas supply, but also for setting prices, because this is a very important issue”.
“Today these prices are exorbitant and we could easily bring them back to normal market levels”Putin told Erdogan.
The Russian president underlined that in terms of Russian hydrocarbons, including gas, Turkey is the “currently most reliable route to supply Europe” through the TurkStream gas pipeline, which transports Russian gas to Turkey and several countries in southern and southeastern Europe. .
TurkStream, located in the Black Sea, can transport up to 31.5 billion cubic meters of gas annually and supplies energy to Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Hungary and North Macedonia.
Russian Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov said in Moscow on Wednesday that it is necessary to negotiate this project not only with Turkey, but also with “friendly” European countries.
The CEO of Russia’s state-owned company Gazprom, Alexei Miller – who accompanied Putin on the trip to Astana, in an entourage of several businessmen and bankers – said the two countries agreed to act quickly to set the timetable for negotiations on the Russian proposal. determine.
Source: DN
