When Gazprom is able to increase gas supplies to Europe through Turkey, Europe will no longer need our gas

Alexey Belogoryev, Deputy Principal Director on Energy Studies of the Institute for Energy and Finance, gave an interview to Svobodnaya Pressa about the prospects for creating a gas hub in Turkey and increasing Turkish transit of Russian gas.

As Alexey Belogoryev explained, the problem now is not at all that Russia has no routes left for gas supplies to Europe, but that it, in principle, intends to refuse from these energy resources in the near future.

This is a very complex matter, and many conditions must be met to create such a hub. The country should have a highly developed financial market, a very advanced transport infrastructure, what cannot be said about Turkey, political stability is needed. This is a task for several decades. To solve the current problems of Russia, the creation of such a gas hub in Turkey will not fundamentally change anything. It is unlikely that Turkey, even in the 30s, will be able to create such a hub that will compete with European ones in terms of pricing. Therefore, there is no point in creating such a hub for Russia, unlike Turkey.

— The problem is that for such construction it is necessary to have long-term guarantees of demand, and no one will give them to Gazprom. An increase in Russian gas supplies is very necessary for Europe in the next two years in order to survive the coming two winters. But already in 2025, a sharp increase in the supply of liquefied natural gas on the world market is expected in connection with the launch of new capacities. The situation with Europe's gas balance will then dramatically improve, and the need for additional Russian gas will disappear. Additional branches of the Turkish Stream can be built and launched no earlier than 2025, that is, when there will no longer be an urgent need for Russian gas.

The second problem is that Europe needs Russian gas, but not at all in the region where it can come from Turkey. Gas is needed in Germany, Austria, Italy. There are no simple gas flows from Turkey to Germany, there are many bottlenecks that do not make it easy to build this infrastructure. An increase in Russian gas supplies on the Turkish-European border will not improve anything fundamentally.