Turkey Orders FSRU which Will Serve Two Terminals
Turkish state gas importer Botas has commissioned the construction of a new FRSU vessel, to operate from both the existing Dortyol FRSU jetty on Turkey's east Mediterranean coast, and a new terminal under development on the Gulf Of Saros in the northwest of the country.
A Botas official confirmed to NGW that the lease for Dortyol will not be renewed as the terminal there had not been used as much as had been expected when it was opened in February 2018. As Turkey's gas demand is highest in the heavily industrialised north west of the country it made sense to develop a new terminal there and to have the one vessels serve both terminals as required.
The offshore jetty and onshore storage for the Saros terminal is already under construction, and according to Turkey's presidential economic programme for 2020, published last month, a tender for the construction of a pipeline to link the terminal to Botas' existing transit infrastructure will be held next year.
The line will connect to the existing 8bn m3/yr Turkey-Greece interconnector which forms part of a loop line around the Sea of Marmara, and is also connected to the TransAnatolian Pipeline (Tanap) line at Kesan, raising the prospect of possible future transit of LNG into Tanap and its downstream adjunct, TransAdriatic Pipeline and on to customers in the Balkans via the various planned interconnector lines.
According to the environmental impact assessment, the Saros terminal will have a storage capacity of between 125,000 - 263,000 m3 of LNG, and a regasification capacity of between 14mn and 28mn m3/d. The existing Dortyol terminal has a storage capacity of 263,000 m3 and a maximum daily regasification capacity of 20mn m3.
Qatar LNG deal yet to be renewed
Where Turkey will source its LNG for the new terminal has yet to be clarified. Botas has long term LNG import contracts with Algeria for 4.4bn m3/yr which ends in October 2024, and with Nigeria for 1.3bn m3/yr which ends in October 2021. It has been supplementing these contracted imports with spot cargoes from a number of countries, most notably Qatar with which it has had a rolling agreement for the supply of a fixed number of cargoes a year.
That agreement has now timed out and had been expected to be renewed either during a visit by the president of Turkey Tayyip Erdogan, who visited Doha late November, or during or following the ceremony for the joining of the Tanap and TAP pipelines November 30, at which Qatari officials were in attendance. However sources close to Ankara suggest that as yet no agreement has yet been reached.