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Gazprom to discuss Turkish Stream resumption on August 31

Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller will visit Turkey to discuss the project

ST.PETERSBURG, August 30. /TASS/ Gazprom will hold talks about resumption of the Turkish Stream project in Turkey on August 31, Deputy CEO of Gazprom Alexander Medvedev told TASS.

"They (the talks - TASS.) are actually under way, this process began at the meeting of Turkish Economy Minister with Russia’s Energy Minister. They agreed on resumption of the project. Alexei Miller’s visit to Turkey and his meeting with his vis-a-vis are scheduled for tomorrow. I'm also going there, the process is actually going on," he said.

Competition with Turkmen gas

The official has stressed that Gazprom is not afraid of competing with Turkmen gas on the European market.

"China is the core market for Turkmenia and therefore we are not afraid of any competition, either with the US or with Turkmenia. We have gas, we have infrastructure and that’s why we are not afraid," Medvedev said.

Gazprom’s export arm Gazprom Export notified Turkmen gas supplier Turkmengaz that it had stopped buying natural gas from Turkmenia as of January 1, 2016, a source in the Russian gas holding told TASS earlier. Gazprom simultaneously increased natural gas purchases from Uzbekistan.

On August 9, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin met in St. Petersburg. After those talks it was decided to resume work on the Turkish Stream project, to set up a working group and to work a road map.

In December 2014, Putin announced the termination of the South Stream project following disagreements with the EU. Brussels insisted that the project should comply with the so-called Third Energy Package, although it is not part of the intra-European gas infrastructure.

It was decided to build Turkish Stream instead of the South Stream but this project was later suspended, in particular due to the crisis in the Russian-Turkish relations.

It was planned that the marine section of Turkish Stream will consist of four lines each with the capacity of 15.75 billion cubic meters. The pipeline is to stretch by 660 km in the old corridor of the South Stream and by 250 km in a new corridor in the direction of the European part of Turkey.