Russia’s natural gas supplies to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline system will likely not be restored and could be redirected in pipelines via the Black Sea to Turkey.
Russian energy giant Gazprom PJSC CEO Alexei Miller told Russian television on Sunday that NatGas supplies via Nord Stream will be redirected to Turkey if the necessary infrastructure is constructed. He said, “You know, nothing’s impossible”:
“We’re talking about those volumes which we have lost thanks to the acts of international terrorism against the Nord Stream pipelines, so these can be significant volumes,” Miller told Russian television, quoted by Russian state-owned news agency Sputnik.
“I’d like to remind you that we have the experience of preparing for the implementation of the South Stream project, which was originally planned to have a capacity of 63 billion cubic meters [per year]. Therefore, if we’re talking even about the technical documentation for the development of the route, for South Stream – all this was already done at one time,” Miller continued.
South Stream was a project that began construction in 2012 but was canceled in 2014 due to European sanctions and restrictions by Brussels. The $20 billion, 1,500-mile-long pipeline network would’ve been able to transit 63 billion cubic meters of NatGas per year via the Black Sea to Bulgaria. It was eventually replaced by TurkStream, which became operational in 2020.
Last week, Miller spoke at the Russian Energy Week forum in Moscow, where he said there was no urgency in fixing the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines after the bombings. He said repairs could take years.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was also at the forum last week and said:
“We could transfer to the Black Sea the lost Nord Stream volumes that used to be transited across the Baltic Sea.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Putin met later in the week to discuss a new Black Sea pipeline using Turkey to export NatGas into Europe.
Last week, Miller said pipelines in the Black Sea are less vulnerable to “terrorist acts” than those in the Baltic Sea.
Turkey’s Energy Minister Fatih Donmez said last week that additional NatGas links toward Turkey from Russia and a trading hub on the EU-Turkish border could be “technically possible.”
