FILYOS /Turkey/, April 13. /TASS/. The Sakarya gas field in the Black Sea will be involved in the implementation of the gas hub project in Turkey, Melih Khan Bilgin, General Manager of the Turkish Oil Company, said in an interview with TASS on Thursday.

"The Sakarya field will be involved in the implementation of the project to launch a gas hub, since 40 million cubic meters of gas will be produced here every day. This is inevitable. But there will still be a need to purchase gas. But supplying gas [to Europe] and creating a gas hub is something other than the supply of gas from the [field] Sakarya," the executive said.

Speaking at the Russian Energy Week forum in October 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed creating the largest gas hub in Europe in Turkey and redirecting the volume of gas, the transit of which is no longer possible through the Nord Stream, to this hub. According to him, this may mean building another gas pipeline system and creating a hub in Turkey, through which gas will be supplied to third countries, primarily European ones, if they are interested. Ankara welcomed this initiative and stated that a significant part of the infrastructure for creating a hub and a gas trading center in Istanbul was ready.

On March 29, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan announced that the ceremony of pumping the first gas to the gas processing plant in Filyos, Zonguldak province, is to take place on April 20, the last day of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

According to the authorities, the reserves of gas fields on the Black Sea shelf are about 540 billion cubic meters. The largest of them is Sakarya (more than 400 billion cubic meters). At the initial stage, this field is expected to produce about 10 million cubic meters of gas per day, or from 3.4 billion to 4 billion per year. By 2028, the volume of daily production should be 40 million cubic meters (15 billion cubic meters per year).

It was expected that the Black Sea gas will begin to flow to consumers in Turkey in March. However, due to the earthquakes on February 6, which caused significant damage, the authorities were forced to reconsider these plans.