On February 14 and 15, Turkey will host a gas summit bringing together exporters and importers of natural gas, Turkey’s Energy Minister Fatih Donmez said on Monday.
“We will bring together supplier countries from the Middle East, Mediterranean, Caspian and Middle Asia with consumer countries from Europe,” Reuters quoted Donmez as saying today.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Turkey has pitched itself to become a gas and energy trading hub in the region.
Donmez said on Monday that Turkey would look to bring together supplier and consumer countries and “become the gas-trading center where the benchmark price of gas is set.”
In November, Donmez told local broadcaster TRT Haber that Turkey could host a conference of natural gas suppliers and importers as part of its efforts to set up – with Russia – a natural gas hub locally.
“We could organise an international gas conference, perhaps in January or February, to bring together gas suppliers and importer countries to take their opinion, we will proceed according to that,” Reuters quoted the Turkish minister as saying.
Turkey is preparing to potentially host a gas hub for Russian and other gas, although that may not be politically palatable to the EU.
At the end of last year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin agreed to set up a natural gas hub in Turkey, the Turkish president said.
A week earlier, Putin suggested that Russia redirect natural gas supplies intended for the damaged Nord Stream pipelines to the Black Sea in order to create a European gas hub in Turkey.
Since Putin first suggested the creation of the gas hub in Turkey, the two countries have not wasted time and instructed in October their respective energy regulators to immediately begin technical work to make the Russian proposal a reality.
“There will be no waiting” on this issue, Erdogan has said, as carried by AP.