Russia’s Gazprom to Halve TurkStream Pipeline Capacity

The Turkish Stream pipeline faces a few political headwinds as Turkey grapples with political crisis.

Gazprom chief executive Aleksei Miller told reporters on October 7 that he is working on the agreement and doesn’t expect Turkish pique over Russian incursions into its airspace this week to deter it.

“Given that there is no intergovernmental agreement, the timeframe will be postponed”, Russian news agencies quoted Gazprom deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev as saying, referring to a deadline next year for building the first of four pipelines.

Russian Federation planned earlier to deliver as much as 63 billion cubic meters of gas a year to Turkey and southeastern Europe, or more than a third of its fuel exports to the European Union, as part of its plans to stop shipping gas through Ukraine from 2020 amid a conflict with the former Soviet ally.

“Given the slowdown in the realisation by Gazprom of Turkish Stream after in fact they slowed down significantly the process during the summer period, I think all these things demonstrated already that probably the initial capacity of 63 bcm looks pretty unachievable in the future”, Kornilov said. “Technically it will be the same as the Nord Stream”.

Turkey is the second largest market for Gazprom after Germany.

Gazprom has earlier said it would have to postpone the launch of Turkish Stream as Moscow and Ankara did not sign an intergovernmental deal, essential for construction to start. Turkey holds new parliamentary elections November 1.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had announced the plan for a TurkStream pipeline in December 2014, saying it would replace Russia’s now scrapped South Stream joint venture with European Union firms.

“We have signed binding documents with the European partners”, he said.