By: Middle east monitor

Turkiye is negotiating an agreement with Turkmenistan to extend a natural gas supply deal for five years, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar told the Hurriyet daily today, noting that the deal is expected to be finalised within the year, Reuters reports.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz are scheduled to meet officials from Turkmenistan in Ankara later in the day.

Earlier this month, Bayraktar said that Turkiye and Turkmenistan had signed a deal for the supply of Turkmen natural gas to Turkiye. The agreement, between Turkiye’s state-owned pipeline operator BOTAS and Turkmenistan’s Turkmengaz, is set to begin on 1 March, with gas flows of 1.3 billion cubic metres via Iran.

“We want to do this long-term. We have a long-term goal of a swap agreement. We are working on a programme that will likely extend to a five-year swap agreement within this year,” Hurriyet quoted Bayraktar as saying.

Turkiye consumes more than 50 billion cubic metres of gas every year, and relies on a mix of piped gas from Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran, along with liquefied natural gas imports from various suppliers.

Bayraktar said that Turkiye aimed to sign a licence for oil and gas exploration in land blocks in Somalia on 1 March. Turkiye is conducting exploration off Somalia as part of an agreement with its East African ally.