With the war between Russia and Ukraine, European countries, especially Turkey, faced crises in the field of energy.
While Turkey is completely dependent on abroad in energy production, every incident experienced abroad affects the citizens who use energy.
Experts reminded that there were problems in industrial centers due to the cutoff of natural gas flow on the Iranian side in the past months, and the crisis in prices with the Russia-Ukraine crisis, and called for adequate measures to be taken.
“WE CONTINUE TO GENERATE ELECTRICITY BY IMPORTING”
Senior engineer Canip Sevinç pointed out that although the countries with 58.3% of natural gas reserves are Turkey's neighbors, Turkey's dependence on foreign energy lies at the root of the energy crisis.
He stated that despite the foreign dependency ratios, Turkey uses natural gas in many areas.
"In 2021, 27.4% of electricity in Turkey was produced from thermal power plants working with natural gas. After 1980, we started to import natural gas needs of Turkey from neighboring countries with large natural gas reserves through natural gas pipelines, and this situation still continues," Sevinc said.
“OUR STORAGE CAPACITY IS BEHIND MANY COUNTRIES”
Noting that Turkey is the 3rd country importing natural gas from Russia, Sevinç pointed out that the top two countries are Germany and Italy.
"Countries such as Germany and Italy are countries with much more energy resource diversity than us. While these countries use much more domestic and national energy resources than we do, the natural gas lines between them and the source countries are geographically long. Despite all this, when we compare the natural gas capacity of Turkey with the natural gas storage capacity, Germany has 8 times, France 5 times, Italy 6 times the storage capacity," Sevinc added.
“OUR CAPACITY ENOUGH FOR 15 DAYS”
Noting that many factors are taken into account in the determination of storage capacities, Sevinç pointed out that energy production and industrial areas are more intense in the use of natural gas imported by Turkey.
"It is quite wrong to calculate and plan the natural gas storage capacities to meet these situations in the event of a curtailment or interruption of natural gas, to meet the consumption of one month only for heating purposes. At the end of January 2022, this mistake was seen by the industrialists of our country. According to the data of Petroleum Transport Joint Stock Company with Pipelines (BOTAŞ), we have a total capacity of 3.4 billion cubic meters. With this amount, it only meets the 15-day requirement in an average year," he said.
“OLD PROJECTS MUST BE COMPLETED”
Reminding that the industry suffered a great blow in the natural gas crisis in January, Sevinç called for the completion of the natural gas warehouses that were started 20 years ago but were not completed,
"Tuz Lake and Silivri natural gas storage facilities, whose projects were initiated 20 years ago by taking lessons from this problem, should be completed as soon as possible to reach their project capacities," he added.