Gazprom to Raise Spending on Turkish Stream

The Gazprom Press Service has announced the Holding will be able to allocate additional funds for the implementation of the project ‘Turkish Stream’ to the amount of approximately 50 billion Rubles ($862.7 million), in accordance with approval from by the company's management of the draft investment program for 2017.

At the beginning of the year, Gazprom said it planned to allocate 41.92 billion Rubles ($723.3 million) for the construction of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline.

"The draft investment program for 2017 in the new edition, which will be considered by the board of directors, provides for an increase in investments in the implementation of the Turkish Stream project by about 50 billion Rubles," the report said.

Last week, it was reported that the Gazprom board had approved the investment program for the current year, according to which the volume of investments was increased by 217.341 billion Rubles ($3.75000161 billion) in total, compared to the program approved in December last year, up to 1.129 trillion Rubles ($19.479766 billion).

The parameters of the program for 2017 were adjusted because the company “sees the need to increase the volume of investments and long-term financial investments in priority strategic gas transportation and production projects”. The new project of the investment program is to be submitted to the Board of Directors of Gazprom.

Two Turkish lines of gas main are to be built, the capacity of each to be 15.75 billion cubic meters/gas per year. The first is intended for deliveries of Russian "blue fuel" directly to Turkey, the second for gas supply to the countries of South and South-Eastern Europe. The first string should be put into operation in March 2018, the second in 2019.

Dimitri Dolaberidze