Turkey is ready to "immediately take steps" necessary to complete the Turkish Stream gas pipeline project, Turkish President Recep Erdogan told the TASS news agency in an interview on Monday.
"There are no obstacles [to the project]," Erdogan said, adding that Russia is Turkey’s biggest natural gas supplier.
The pipeline project — frozen during the conflict between the two countries that emerged after the downing of a Russian Su-24 bomber in November last year — is still at an early stage, but can advance quickly if given approval from both sides, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich told the RBC news agency last month.
The terms and conditions attached to the project will be among the main topics discussed at the meeting between Erdogan and President Vladimir Putin scheduled for Tuesday, according to Gazprom’s deputy head Alexander Medvedev.
The Turkish Stream project was announced in December 2014 as a replacement for the aborted South Stream project, with a pipeline designed to transfer up to 63 billions of cubic meters of gas per year from Russia to western Turkey. Current gas supplies are carried out using the Blue Stream and Trans-Balkan pipelines.
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