Bulgaria in talks to take 1 Bcm/year of capacity at Turkish LNG terminals: minister

Bulgaria is in talks to book some 1 Bcm/year of import capacity at Turkish LNG terminals in order to be able to take Turkish re-exports of regasified LNG in the future, Bulgaria's caretaker energy minister Rosen Hristov said Dec. 23.

According to a report from Bulgarian news agency BTA, Hristov said there was currently only limited capacity in Greece for LNG imports, but Turkey offered an alternative for re-exported gas.

Hristov said the existing LNG import terminal at Revithoussa in Greece was "too busy," adding: "It is very hard to reserve capacity."

Bulgaria has already booked 1 Bcm/year of LNG import capacity at the planned floating LNG terminal at Alexandroupolis in Greece from 2024, but Bulgaria needs an additional 1 Bcm/year of LNG imports, he said.

This is only possible in Turkey, he said, adding that it hoped to book the capacity for imports via Turkey for 2024.

Hristov added that Turkey had said Bulgaria would be able to import regasified LNG landed at any of Turkey's LNG import terminals.

Test volumes

Turkey's Botas in June carried out some test re-exports of gas imported as LNG at its Marmara import terminal to Bulgaria via the company's pipeline network, with up to 9 million cu m/d allocated for delivery at the Malkoclar point.

However, there is still no interconnection agreement between Turkey and Bulgaria that would allow for commercial deliveries of gas.

Hristov said Dec. 20 that he hoped to complete negotiations with Turkey on an interconnection agreement before the end of the year in a bid to seal an agreement of at least 13 years.

Botas' deputy CEO Talha Pamukcu said Dec. 23 that Turkey had the physical capacity to send gas to Bulgaria and Greece, but the two countries would need to invest in infrastructure to take advantage of capacity available from Turkey.

Turkey already transits gas from Russia to Bulgaria via the TurkStream pipeline and from Azerbaijan to Greece via the TANAP pipeline, but more gas -- particularly regasified LNG -- could also be re-exported from Turkey.

Hristov said re-exports of Turkish LNG would enable Bulgaria to meet some 30% of its gas demand, with another 30% supplied via LNG landed in Greece and the rest from Azerbaijan, he said.

Russian gas

There had been concerns that Bulgaria could face gas shortages this winter after it lost access to Russian gas in April because of Sofia's refusal to comply with the terms of Moscow's new ruble-based payment mechanism.

Bulgargaz's long-term gas import deal with Gazprom Export expires at the end of 2022, and Sofia had hoped it could resume Russian imports for the remaining volumes under the contract in the final months of the year.

However, no agreement was reached.

Bulgargaz's 10-year supply agreement with Gazprom Export is for the supply of up to 2.9 Bcm/year of gas, which historically met almost all of Bulgaria's demand.

Much lower Russian gas exports to Europe saw prices hit record highs in the summer.

Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, assessed the benchmark Dutch TTF month-ahead price at an all-time high of Eur319.98/MWh on Aug. 26.

Prices have weakened since on the back of healthy storage and demand curtailments but remain historically high with Platts assessing the TTF month-ahead price Dec. 22 at Eur92/MWh.