Botas to suspend Turkey's Azeri piped gas supply
Turkey's Botas said July 22 it will suspend gas transit next month through the South Caucasus section of the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC), which brings natural gas from BP's Shah Deniz gas field in Azerbaijan, to complete a 14-day maintenance turnaround.
The maintenance programme will run from August 14 to 28. Botas does not expect any material impact on Turkish gas availability, though Shah Deniz also supplies gas to southern Europe through the rest of the Southern Gas Corridor, to which the Turkish gas pipeline is connected.
Turkey signed a new gas purchase agreement with Azerbaijan in October 2021 to receive 2.5bn m3/yr from Shah Deniz this year, rising to 3.5bn m3 in 2023. BP has been ramping up output from both phases of the project, though Caspian gas supplies to Turkey were also disrupted last year when one of Botas's contracts expired.
Europe is looking to BP's Azeri assets as a potential solution to its long-term energy security concerns, with Brussels having last week drafted an MoU proposal to double SGC's capacity to around 20bn m3/yr by 2027. Negotiations are still at an early stage, and it remains to be seen whether BP can flow enough gas to support the additional transit, with financing for the expansion another key component of the MoU.