Gazprom to switch Turkey onto part-ruble tariff: press
Gazprom plans to transfer Turkey to a new tariff under which 25% of monies collected for gas imports would be priced in roubles, in line with the Kremlin's push to reduce economic dependency on the US dollar and euro reserve currencies, Bloomberg reported on September 6.
The agreement is likely to cover Turkey's state-owned energy importer Botas. As of last year, seven private companies along with Botas held long-term contracts with Gazprom for 14 bn m3/yr, delivered through the Turkish Stream pipeline.
The new ruble-payments agreement would phase out euro and dollar-denominated bills for Gazprom's supplies over time, containing price inflation that could occur as the ruble exchange rate fluctuates.
Getting Turkey on board is a boost for the ruble-payments policy, which has got off to a slow start with several EU customers now cut off from Russian piped gas for refusing to comply. The 25% ruble payments deal is striking because Turkey has opposed Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has irked his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin previously and has shrewdly positioned Turkey, a member of the NATO alliance, as a "swing" player between Russian and western interests. Erdogan did not hesitate to continue supplying Ukraine with armed drones to defend against the invasion, though he refused to back western sanctions.
Nonetheless, the two presidents reaffirmed Turkish-Russian energy ties at a bilateral summit in Sochi last month. Turkey uses Russian gas imports to meet almost half of its national energy requirement, while the Russian nuclear agency Rosatom has been commissioned to build its first nuclear generation facility.
The Kremlin mandated in March that all importers in nations "unfriendly" to its "special military operation" switch currencies, but the strategy appears to have now pivoted to allies and neutral countries. Bloomberg said China's CNPC had also agreed to a dual-currency payments structure, with bills to be collected in a 50-50 split of yuan and rubles.