According to half yearly stats by EPDK (Turkish gas market regulator), gas consumption overshot imports (historically covering around 99% of demand) by no less than 4.6bcm.
Even if accounting for Black Sea offshore production, nowadays ticking at around 0.16bcm/month, the gap is still around 3.65bcm.
As if that wasn’t confusing enough, storage data are even more perplexing.
In February, when consumption exceeded imports by more than 1bcm, Turkish companies (or was it just BOTAŞ?) actually injected gas in storage, rather than withdrew gas.
Although storage levels did decrease from February to March, they remained pretty stable for the rest of the months (up to July), even though according to EPDK’s own data, consumption overshot imports each month until June, included.
Of course, in the absence of real-time data, it’s hard to tell what is happening in the market.
Are the data reports consistently wrong? Are Turks kept freezing in their homes? Or is the gas kept in storage and shipped to Europe whenever prices increase and allow for delightful margins to be made?
Source: Aura SABADUS
