Unidentified governmental officials in Turkey have disclosed details of a large contractual concession that the country’s state oil and gas producer and importer Botas received last year from Russian gas giant Gazprom.
Reuters quoted unnamed sources as saying that Turkey had deferred the payment of $600 million to Gazprom for gas imported via Blue Stream and TurkStream pipelines across the Black Sea to 2024.
The deferral eases the pressure on Turkey’s foreign reserves ahead of the upcoming presidential elections on 14 May.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is running for a third term in office amid a political and economic environment that some analysts believe presents the best chance for an opposition leader to come out ahead of the incumbent in years.
The source quoted by Reuters said that Turkey later this year could push back more payments for Russian gas if gas prices exceed a certain — but not revealed — threshold.
Turkish Energy Minister Fatih Donmez last week said that Turkey and Russia agreed a deal allowing Ankara to defer energy payments up to a certain amount, but he did not give details.
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Turkey’s energy import bill hit a record of almost $100 billion in 2022. The country purchased 21.6 billion cubic metres of gas, or 39% of its total gas imports, from Russia, according to statistics from Turkey’s energy market regulator EPDK.
Last year, Erdogan had readily embraced a sudden proposal from Russian President Vladimir Putin to build more subsea gas pipelines across the Black Sea to deliver more Russian gas into Turkey and thus enable the country to become a major regional gas distribution hub.
Putin’s proposal came after Gazprom lost an estimated 75% of its gas exports to Europe in what is widely regarded as a political decision by the Kremlin in retaliation for the support of most European to Ukraine, which Moscow invaded in February 2022.
Turkey is the second country to obtain a deferred payment concession from Moscow, with Hungary last year disclosing a similar deal with Gazprom.
Though Russia has not disclosed the volume of last year’s exports to Hungary or the value of its deferred payment, Gazprom in previous years had supplied between 8 Bcm and 9 Bcm of gas to Hungary.