Gas to Start Flowing Through Turkish Stream in Dec 2016 - Gazprom

Gazprom announced on Thursday that gas deliveries through the Turkish Stream pipeline will start in December of next year.

"We had very efficient and crucial talks today. It was agreed to bring onstream Turkish Stream and to start gas supplies in December 2016," Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller said in a company statement.

Miller spoke after meeting with Turkey's Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Y?ld?z in Ankara earlier on Thursday.

"Gazprom, while implementing its portion of work under the Turkish Stream project, will follow the agreements reached today," Miller added.

Miller said in December of last year that Gazprom will build a pipeline under the Black Sea to Turkey and further west to a gas hub on the country's border with Greek border for further distribution to European customers. The pipeline called Turkish Stream is to replace the South Stream gas pipeline project bypassing Ukraine which Gazprom said it had abandoned in light of European Commission objections. South Stream, starting in Russia, was to cross the Black Sea and come ashore in EU member Bulgaria.

Thursday's announcement is a breakthrough for Gazprom because Turkey had earlier expressed concern over being too dependent on Russian energy supplies, Reuters commented in its coverage of the news. According to Russian media reports in March the negotiations between Russia and Turkey on the price of the piped gas were deadlocked, possibly delaying the project.

Gazprom plans to pump up to 63 billion cubic metres of gas per year through Turkish Stream, the same as the scrapped South Stream. This will include 47 billion cubic metres to be transited to Europe via the future distribution centre at the Turkish-Greek border.

The announcement by Alexey Miller...