Four new players to start to sell natural gas in Turkish market

Four players, in addition to state-owned natural gas company Botas, will begin operating in Turkey's natural gas market on Wednesday, officials said.

The contracts to take over some distribution of imported natural gas in Turkey from state-owned Botas signed in 2007, will allow Enerco to sell 2.5 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas a year for 14 years and Avrasya Gaz to sell 500 million cubic meters (mcm) of gas for 13 years.

Shell and Bosphorus were the first two companies given the green-light from the EPDK for natural gas sales in Turkey.

Shell sells 250 mcm of gas annually, supplied by Gazprom, while Bosphorus sells 750 mcm of gas. Bosphorus plans to increase it to 6-7 bcm of gas a year.

Socar-Turcas, the owner of Turkey's petro-chemical company Petkim, has plans to bring 1 bcm of natural gas from Azerbaijan and Turkerler Group has applied to EPDK to import 10 bcm of gas from Iraq.

EPDK Chairman Hasan Koktas said the annual natural gas sales by these four companies would amount to $1.5 billion in 2009.

"Private sector share is expected to be around 10 percent in Turkey's natural gas consumption in 2009, but this share will grow in the future," he said.