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With initiatives pertaining to the energy sector, Turkiye is aiming to become a global hub for determining natural gas reference prices, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday.

"Our aim is to transform our country into a global center where the natural gas reference price is determined as soon as possible," Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a ceremony marking the completion of a project to expand a subterranean gas storage facility near Istanbul.

The country's northwestern region of Trakya bordering both Greece and Bulgaria will become an especially important hub for both natural gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) with the increasing capacity of LNG and underground gas storage, he added at the event in Silivri.

Erdogan added that Ankara is in contact with Moscow, a major natural gas producer, and exporter, underlining that they would take the necessary steps to make Turkiye an energy hub.

Highlighting the importance of storage facilities as European countries are facing the prospects of energy shortage, Erdogan said that with the expansion, the Silivri Underground Natural Gas Storage Facility is now the largest in Europe with a capacity of 4.6 billion cubic meters (bcm).

With the expansion, total natural gas storage capacity increased by almost 50% in the underground facility, with the amount of gas stored rising from 3.2 bcm to 4.6 bcm by the year-end, he added.

Stating that they have provided nearly 85% of the population with natural gas in 703 settlements in 81 provinces, Erdogan added, “We have discovered the largest natural gas reserve in our country, 540 billion cubic meters, in the Black Sea. We are carrying out a feverish activity to transfer this natural gas to our national grid. At the same time, we are working day and night to share the good news of new discoveries with our nation. A similar development is taking place in the field of oil exploration and production. We both make new drillings and control old wells and bring them into production. Hopefully, we will increase our daily oil production to 100,000 barrels in a short time, and then we will continue on our way for greater discoveries and productions.”

On its own, the facility "will be able to meet a quarter of demand, even in (periods of) our country's most intensive consumption," Erdogan said, adding that up to 45 million cubic meters of gas can be injected into the Silivri Underground Natural Gas Storage Facility in a single day.

Turkiye will continue to take all measures to keep at bay the problems caused by the global energy crisis in Europe in the short and medium term, and problems that will slow down the development goals in the long term, Erdogan underlined.

Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin had discussed how the countries work jointly on building a natural gas hub in Turkiye's Trakya region.

After talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin earlier this year, Erdogan announced that Ankara and Moscow would work together to build a natural gas hub in Trakya after a proposal from Russia.

Turkiye's natural gas demand last year hit 60 billion cubic meters.

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