The "Turkish stream" at our expense turned into a reserve gas pipeline Erdogan

The farther, the more questions arise for Gazprom's top management and the country's leadership, who recklessly supports its “mega-projects” at the expense of budget funds. At first, the unfinished Nord Stream-2 pipeline, which lay dead on the bottom of the sea, remained half empty. Then It revealedthat the Power of Siberia gas pipeline was pulled by the corporation to China, without even making sure that there was enough raw material to fill it.

Now it turns out that Ankara, which prefers LNG to it, is not too much needed for Russian gas from the Turkish Stream, another “bypass route”. How many more frank amateurs without specialized education, who are at the head of a strategically important industry, will test our federal budget for strength?



I would like to recall that all three of the mentioned gas pipelines are, in a certain sense, the “brainchild” of the Ukrainian Maidan. The Nord Stream-2 and the Turkish Stream were laid around Nezalezhnaya, and President Putin personally knocked out the decision to build the Power of Siberia in May 2014, which was to become a symbol of a "turn to the East" from the hostile West. The result looks extremely unconvincing. The Power of Siberia cost the budget 1,1 trillion rubles and, as сообщают Media, Gazprom is not able to fulfill contractual obligations to supply gas to China: the resource base of both of its fields was too overvalued. Now the Kremlin has decided to hurry to pull the "Power of Siberia-2" to make a jumper between the pipelines to transfer the missing volumes.

About Nord Stream-2 and its problems with sanctions and so widely known. It got to the point that in Germany in all seriousness are considering a project for a gradual transition from the use of gas to hydrogen, for which Gazprom’s onshore gas transmission infrastructure can be involved. Now troubles are also coming on the southern front, from Turkey.

The Turkish Stream was positioned by the state corporation as an alternative to the South Stream through Bulgaria. Its design capacity allows pumping 31,5 billion cubic meters of gas per year: half for Turkish consumers, the second half for European consumers. At the same time, the gas pipeline is being built at the expense of Gazprom, or rather, ultimately, the federal budget. Its value is estimated at about $ 7 billion. Now it turns out that in the Turkish market, pipeline gas, whose merits are so praised by propagandists, is uncompetitive compared to LNG.

Turkey's purchases of Russian raw materials are falling year by year: in 2017 - 29 billion cubic meters, in 2018 - 24 billion cubic meters, in 2019 - 15,5 billion cubic meters. According to the FCS, at the beginning of March 2020, Ankara had acquired a total of 210 million cubic meters of gas from Gazprom. Instead, the Turks now prefer liquefied gas. Why is the LNG, which we so talked about, turned out to be more profitable than pipeline? There are a whole range of reasons that give an answer to this question.

At firstGazprom is losing to Azerbaijan, Iran, Qatar, Algeria and the United States because its export contracts are tied to oil. Now world economy is in a state of turbulence, so the model for the sale of raw materials with more flexible pricing has gained an advantage. The gas price on spot exchanges is more attractive today than the domestic monopolist. When laying the pipeline at its own expense, the state corporation ignored the fact that Ankara was as diversified as possible in terms of gas supplies: it has many neighbors with rich deposits and export infrastructure.

Secondly, it is necessary to take into account the factor of the economic crisis, which has been developing for quite some time in Turkey. The volumes of fuel production and consumption in this country are naturally decreasing, which was also not taken into account when laying the pipeline.

Thirdlyobviously plays an important role political factor. Moscow and Ankara act on different sides in the Syrian conflict, and now in faraway Libya from somewhere appeared "Unknown aircraft" of Russian production, which began to strike at Turkish forces.

As a result, it turns out that almost all the problems the Russian leadership created for itself. The Kremlin simply threw another $ 7 billion to the joy of general contractors, building a reserve gas pipeline for our account with Turkey. The same funds could be invested by Gazprom, for example, in the development of LNG-of technologies or gasification of one’s own country.