KILIS, TÜRKIYE, August 2. We are completing the infrastructure that will be able to export up to two billion cubic meters of natural gas per year to Syria, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources of Türkiye Alparslan Bayraktar said at the opening ceremony of the Turkish-Syrian natural gas pipeline today, Trend's correspondent reports.
"Our President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan instructed us to take immediate steps to ensure that life in Syria returns to normal. We, as the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, discussed what we could do in this most basic universal need—electricity supply, especially in energy infrastructure.
We sent two separate expert teams from our ministry to Damascus in a very short period of time—the first in December, immediately after the coup. Our teams completed their work quickly. We focused on and determined what we could do in the short, medium, and long term.
As Türkiye, we have been providing electricity to regions such as Afrin and Idlib since 2017. We are currently exporting electricity to Syria from eight different points. We aim to increase our export capacity by 25 percent in the first stage and more than double it with the new connection lines we will add later.
When we complete our work, our connection capacity will reach 860 megawatts and meet the electricity needs of 1.6 million homes in Syria.
At the beginning of May, I met with my esteemed brother, Minister Al-Bashir, within the framework of the Natural Resources Summit held in Istanbul. During our meeting, we discussed technical support and cooperation opportunities for strengthening the electricity and natural gas infrastructure within the framework of Syria's post-war reconstruction process.
In addition, we expressed our readiness as Türkiye for any kind of cooperation to strengthen stability in the region and meet the basic energy needs of the Syrian people. Not even a month has passed. At the end of May, we visited Damascus again.
Within the framework of this visit, we discussed key topics such as electricity, natural gas, and oil, and as a result of our meeting, we signed a memorandum of understanding between Türkiye and Syria in the fields of energy, mining, and hydrocarbons. With this agreement, we have formed a roadmap, a framework agreement for the development of cooperation between our countries in the fields of energy, mining, and hydrocarbons.
In this context, we have taken an important step to deliver the natural gas needed by the power plants in Hale through a pipeline from Türkiye. We are continuing the 36-inch diameter and approximately 93-kilometer-long pipeline that originates from the Türkoğlu district of Kahramanmaraş towards Syria. This line has reached the Yavuzlu Measuring Station located in the Yavuzlu village of Kilis, on the Turkish-Syrian border, where we are holding the ceremony.
BOTAS has worked together with the Syrian Gas Company (SGC) to prepare the infrastructure of the Syrian part of this line and has provided them with all kinds of technical support. Let's turn the valve here and start the flow and transmit the natural gas coming from Azerbaijan to Syria via Kilis. The Yavuzlu Measuring Station will provide for the transmission of up to six million cubic meters of gas per day.
The natural gas will be delivered to Aleppo and from there to Homs. Thus, the power plants there will also be put into operation soon. In the first stage, we have completed the infrastructure that can export up to two billion cubic meters of natural gas per year to Syria as of today. We are. Approximately 1,200 megawatt power plants will operate with this natural gas. This will meet the electricity needs of five million homes in Syria and will make a very large and significant contribution to the normalization of life in the region.
I must say a special sentence for Azerbaijan here because the country, with which we share sorrow and joy, has also given great support to this project. A swap agreement has been signed with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) on the delivery of gas from Azerbaijan to the Turkish-Syrian border.
As you may recall, in March we implemented a similar project in Nakhchivan. The uninterrupted flow of natural gas through Türkiye via the Igdir-Nakhchivan pipeline to Nakhchivan began. Today, we are opening a new project with Mikayil Jabbarov under the slogan 'two states, one nation.'
Hopefully, we will be supplying power plants in Syria with natural gas from Azerbaijan, which we will start exporting from today," he added.
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