Azerbaijan, Iran gas flows to Turkey interrupted

Feb 7, 2012, 13:12 GMT

Istanbul - The flow of natural gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey was halted on Tuesday because of technical problems, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said.

The minister also said that the supply of gas from Iran had dropped after an explosion at a compression station.

'We had been receiving around 40 million cubic metres a day from Iran and Azerbaijan together and that has now fallen to between 6-7 million cubic metres a day,' he said during a televised press conference.

He expected supply to return to normal and ruled out shortages.

'Neither industrial nor residential consumers will see any cut in gas supply,' he said, adding that Turkey was still receiving gas from Russia, Algeria and Nigeria.

A spokesman for BP, which operates Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz gas field, told dpa that the flow of gas to Turkey would resume later on Tuesday.

Turkey has experienced a series of gas shortages over the past weeks due in part to record high gas consumption prompted by extremely cold weather.

Turkey imports up to 6.6 billion cubic metres of gas each year from Azerbaijan, ten billion cubic meters from Iran, and 30 billion cubic metres from Russia. It also buys liquid natural gas (LNG) from Algeria and Nigeria.

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