ANKARA, January 29. /TASS/. The Turkish government plans to expedite efforts toward transforming the Black Sea port of Filyos in northern Turkey into a major natural gas export terminal, Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar told reporters.

"The port of Filyos has actually became the base for natural gas [transportation and processing]. It will be an important export port. The Ministry of Transport made substantial investments for this purpose. We discussed with counterparts how to further concur in expediting and implementing this project," Bayraktar said, cited by the A Haber television channel.

The port has already been linked to national rail and road systems, Turkish Transport Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said. "The port of Filyos is the logistics center project. It will be able to service high-capacity shops owing to available berths with the depth of 14 and 19 meters. The annual capacity will be 25 mln metric tons," he added.

Gas from Turkey’s Black Sea gas fields is delivered to this port for processing and injection into the national gas distribution system. Gas production in the Black Sea has reached a daily volume of 2.7 mln cubic meters, Bayraktar noted.