Turkey Hopes to Catch up with Azeri Gas by 2017: Report

Turkish state importer Botas hopes to receive more gas from the Shah Deniz Phase 1 project by the end of 2017 to compensate for lower intake in the past, Zaman newspaper reported on January 12.

Botas pays before delivery from the Shah Deniz consortium, set at 6.6bn m³/yr. Over the past years, Azerbaijan has exported less than this volume owing to a lack of pipeline capacity inside Turkey. A gas compressor station was only installed in Erzurum in 2014.

The report says that the terms of the take or pay clause mean the total debt due to Azerbaijan for gas that Botas did not take – but had agreed to – was TL205.6mn lira ($114.9mn) as of the end of 2012 and TL687 million by the the end of 2013. This had risen further to TL892.9mn by the end of 2014.

The report added that Botas has until 2017 to even out its contractual offtake with its actual offtake.

In the first 11 months of last year Azerbaijan exported 6bn m³ of Shah Deniz gas, about 1.6% more than in the same period in 2014, operator BP told Natural Gas Europe December 25. The year before, exports from the field were 6.5bn m³.

The minimum annual volume of gas, which Turkey has to buy as a part of the agreement, is 5.2bn m³. Turkey has to pay $45/’000m³ for the gas it was contracted to take delivery of, but could not do so owing to the lack of capacity.