Turkey's Erdogan orders to start working on Black Sea gas hub immediately

Turkish President Recep Erdogan ordered to start working on the gas hub project after Putin's proposal.

The ministries of energy of Russia and Turkey will start working on the issue immediately as there is no need to wait, Erdogan believes.

According to the Turkish president, such a platform can be created in Thrace.

Russian President Putin gave the same instructions to the Russian Ministry of Energy.

"Our Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources and the Russian side will carry out their work on this issue, present it [the results] to us, and then we will take this step. One can not wait,” Erdogan said.

Thrace (the northwestern part of Turkey, where Istanbul is located) is a suitable place for building the gas hub, Erdogan believes.

Putin suggested the idea to create a gas hub in Turkey at a meeting of the Russian Energy Week forum.

"We could move the lost volume of transit through the Nord Streams, along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, to the Black Sea region and thus make the main routes for the supplies of our fuel, our natural gas to Europe through Turkey, creating in Turkey the largest gas hub for Europe,” Putin suggested. "Unless, of course, our partners are interested in this.”

Turkey's Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Fatih Donmez said that it was the first time when he had heard of such plans. Technically "this is absolutely possible," he said.

The head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, said that the company was ready to build the necessary gas transmission facilities. He called the idea of ​​transferring supplies to the Black Sea region relevant. According to Miller, the works to repair the Nord Streams pipelines after the blasts will take a long time.