I was happy to address Türkiye’s push to become a gas hub: both for its own domestic security of supply, and to become an indispensable supplier to the European market. I was on with esteemed gas-sector analysts Aura Sabadus and Oktay TanriseverI, and host Yusuf Erim. TRT is a state-supported Turkish national broadcaster. The Turkish, East Med, Central Asian, Caspian regions involved are fairly complex, and I will simply let the interview speak for itself. Turkey is making progress but needs to end market-price setting, as Aura Sabadus stressed – and I agreed, as well as further diversification of supplies. I stressed the self-destructive EU lack of interest in long-term new pipeline gas from Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan it could indeed contract for, which would all transit Turkey.
You will see (my 3rd answer) that I raised again my view that Europe will become ever more deeply in need (i.e., dependent) on natural gas imports, but is acting rather “schizophrenic” about this. Brussels et al seems not to be willing to face this reality. Natural gas importance and its geostrategic nature will only increase due, perhaps counter-intuitively, to EU over-dependence on renewables. But, where is the urgency, then, to sign long-term pipeline-gas contracts from neighboring states via a developing Turkish gas-sales hub? Such supplies would generally be cheaper than LNG imports, especially if the LNG is purchased on short-term spot markets. Indeed, even its main pipeline supplies now, from Norway, are reportedly mainly via short-term spot purchases (See Morten Frisch, Norwegian gas-sector veteran). I find this astonishing for both price and security of supply.
Europe is gradually realizing that overly-renewable-dependent electrical systems require massive natural gas base load plus gas-fueled backup generation. There are two reasons for this: heavily renewable systems can neither (a) supply sufficient domestically generated electricity for most modern European economies and (b) have no universal, long-term, grid-scale storage tech available to back up over-installations of weather-variable renewables during longer periods of reduced wind and/or solar generation.
The entire show, IMHO, above is rather interesting, with my co-guest experts making good points. However, if you are interested in my comments, here are links to their timestamps: -1- 02:21, -2- 06:52 -3- 14:30 -4- 20:50.
I’m always interested to know what you think. Many readers write me via WhatsApp or private email. – Tom O’D (in Berlin)
PS I have been at four quite informative European security conferences in the past few weeks and so have been absent here … I will report on these soon.
The Global Barrel 