Turkey uses 1 percent of global energy, gas consumption jumps

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Turkey meets the majority of its electricity need at natural gas-burning power plants like the one in this file photo. Hürriyet photo

Turkey consumes 1 percent of the world’s total energy and 1.4 percent of its natural gas, according to a benchmark annual report by BP.

The country’s overall energy consumption increased 9.2 percent last year from 2010, while its oil consumption rose 5.8 percent to 32 million tons, or 0.8 percent of global consumption, the report said.
The U.S. consumed 833.6 million tons of oil last year, some 20.5 percent of the world’s total consumption, while China followed with 461.8 million tons.

Turkey had the world’s third highest increase in natural gas consumption at 17.3 percent, a category topped by Greece and China respectively, according to data gathered by Anatolia news agency. Turkey uses natural gas to produce the majority of its electricity.

Rapid growth triggers consumption

Turkey’s gas consumption last year was 45.7 billion cubic meters. It is dependent on Russia, Iran and Iraq for oil and gas.

The country’s economy grew 8.5 percent last year, which naturally triggered a rise in energy consumption.

“2011 was an unusually eventful year in global energy,” BP Group Chief Executive Bub Dudley said while revealing the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2012 in June. “The tumultuous events of the ‘Arab Spring‘ shook energy markets and underscored the importance of maintaining spare capacity and strategic stockpiles for dealing with supply disruptions. The earthquake and tsunami in Japan was a humanitarian disaster; and one with immediate implications – in Japan and around the world – for nuclear power and other fuels. Oil prices hit an all-time record high,” Dudley said.

Overall global energy consumption grew by 2.5 percent in 2011, way below the 5.1 percent growth of 2010.

Oil remained the most-used energy with a total share of 33.1 percent, however the rise in its consumption was a mere 0.7 percent.

Global natural gas consumption grew 2.2 percent but it declined nearly 10 percent in crisis-hit Europe - an all-time record.

The consumption of renewable energy, which includes wind, geothermal, sun and wastes in BP’s report, increased 46.6 percent in Turkey, up to an equivalent of 1.3 million tons of petroleum. The global renewable energy consumption figure stands at over 13 percent.

Global coal consumption, meanwhile, jumped 5.4 percent.