Gas storage facility in Turkey to come online by 2019

The gas storage facility under Lake Tuz in Central Anatolia will become fully operational by 2019, according to sources from the Energy Ministry. 

Some 65 percent of the construction activities have already been completed and the first part of the project, which is composed of six storage units, will be opened by 2017, according to officials. 

In the framework of the project, all expropriation works, fresh water supply and discharging pipeline construction and electricity transmission lines mounting have already been completed. Three pumping stations and five water deposits were also built, the ministry officials said. 

The project will be composed of 12 wells with the capacity of 1 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas storage, and the drilling activities are being made for the last well. The capacity of the facility is planned to be increased in the coming years. 

The drilling of the first of the project's 12 wells began in 2012.

From each well, a total of 40 million cubic meters of gas can be pumped into the country's gas network on a daily basis. 

The project was financed through an international loan agreement at $325,000, which was inked between the World Bank and Turkey's gas grid BOTA? in 2006, and an additional financing loan deal at $400,000, which was signed in 2014. 

Germany has the largest gas storage capacity in Europe, followed by Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Ukraine and France. 

According to data from the Gas Infrastructure of Europe (GIE), around 25 bcm of gas storage capacity will come online in the next decade across Europe. Some 4 percent of this new capacity will be supplied through the Lake Tuz facility.