The Kremlin allowed a shift in the timing of the creation of a gas hub in Turkey due to an earthquake

The timing of the gas hub project in Turkey may be slightly shifted due to the earthquake that occurred on February 6, but this will not affect the plans of the parties, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“Many, many countries, including our country, will help Turkey in this if necessary, just as they are now assisting in clearing the rubble, in search of the victims. So yes, this process can move a little bit to the right. But in fact, this will not affect the implementation of plans,” he said at a briefing.

Eliminating the consequences of the natural disaster is now a priority for Ankara, and this is treated with understanding in Moscow, Peskov added. He also expressed confidence that Turkey will cope with this disaster.

On December 28, 2022, the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, said that Moscow and Ankara had begun work out implementation of a project to create a gas hub in Turkey. According to him, the Russian-Turkish project will ensure transparent and fair pricing in the natural gas market.

Russian President Vladimir Putin came up with the idea of ​​creating a new hub for Russian gas supplies last October, and in the same month, his colleague Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the agreements reached with Putin on the creation of an international gas hub in the country. Later it became known that the gas distribution center within the framework of the hub project would be located in Thrace – in the north-west of the republic. At the same time, Turkey intends to start operating the gas hub within a year, reported at the end of January, the Ministry of Energy of the country.

The strongest earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 points in the south-east of Turkey and northern Syria with an epicenter near the city of Gaziantep occurred early in the morning on February 6. The second strongest was the 7.6 magnitude shock that followed later in the province of Kahramanmarash. WHO spokesman Adelheid Marchang said at a press conference in Geneva that 23 million people could have been affected by the earthquake in the two countries.