Turkey may purchase natural gas from Qatar

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

A man looks at a Qatari Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) tanker as she crosses through the Suez Canal. Turkey considers buying natural gas from the Gulf country. REUTERS photo

Turkey’s energy and natural resources minister said on April 21 that Turkey was willing to purchase natural gas from Qatar to meet its growing natural gas needs.

Energy Minister Taner Yıldız said Turkey was trying to meet its natural gas needs with supplies from many countries, in return for reasonable prices. Yıldız had also hinted on April 13 that the government was interested in swapping electricity for Iraqi natural gas and would build a power plant on the Northern Iraqi border.

“We foresee purchasing 3 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Qatar this year. We will start buying natural gas from Qatar if we agree on the price,” Yıldız told reporters in Doha, Qatar, saying that he was not sure if the natural gas would be imported by the state natural gas distributor BOTAŞ or by the private sector, and that those details would be ironed out later. Yıldız is accompanying Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during his visit to Qatar.

Yıldız said Turkey and Qatar would sign a framework agreement if they reach a compromise, and that they were still at the negotiation stage. This stage could take one to one and a half months, according to Yıldız. Turkey has also signed a deal with a Canadian company to begin talks about building a nuclear power plant in Turkey, Yıldız said. “An agreement [on the construction of the power plant] will be signed if we reach a compromise, otherwise we will not sign an agreement.”

An agreement was signed between Turkey’s state-owned power company, EÜAŞ, and Canada’s Candu in Istanbul on April 20 to carry out a six-month feasibility study for a nuclear plant at the Black Sea port of Sinop.