Turkey inaugurates its second floating LNG unit

Turkey’s Energy and Natural Resources Minister, Berat Albayrak, announced on 7 February the launch of the nation’s second floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) unit.

The unit, dubbed an FSRU, has the capacity to send out 20mn cubic metres of LNG per day from a port in Dortyol, Hatay, where it is docked.

Turkey has plans to reduce its dependency on pieline gas through the implementation of FSRUs.

In order to do so, the units are strategically located in ports near area of high gas consumption, with this one in the Mediterranean region.

“We are minimizing investment costs for transmission and distribution lines as well as transportation costs [with FSRUs],” Mr Albayrak stated.

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In 2016, the first unit was located in Aliaga, Izmir – this was due to the nation’s requirement of additional gas capacity to meet higher demands due to cold weather in December.

“The (second) unit has 263,000 cubic meters of LNG storage capacity. This capacity size is the largest in the world,” the Minister commented.

“The unit has around 20 million cubic meters of daily send-out capacity and will contribute a lot to Turkey's energy security.”

“Turkey will increase its 3.5 billion cubic meters of gas storage capacity from Silivri and Salt Lake storage facilities to 10 billion cubic meters by 2023,” he added.

“Our target is to be able to store at least 20 percent of our annual gas consumption so that we can have more energy security.”