ISTANBUL

With the increase in gas consumption during the winter season, operations at Turkey's liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal and the country's biggest underground natural gas storage facility have intensified.

Anadolu Agency viewed the work at the first and biggest underground natural gas storage facility in Turkey located in Silivri, Istanbul, and the Marmara Ereglisi LNG Import Terminal in Tekirdag in the Thrace region.

These facilities play an important role in securing gas supply through pipelines and LNG cargoes in the country that is highly dependent on energy imports.

Turkey's consumption is expected to reach a record volume of 60 billion cubic meters this year due to increased gas usage in power plants, while also replacing lower output from drought-impacted hydro plants.

The LNG terminal is now tripling its operations compared to the summer season, with the processing of up to eight to nine large LNG cargoes per month to meet greater demand.

"We receive LNG cargoes almost once every two days now. The terminal is quite busy in that regard," Erdinc Deli, the process manager at the terminal, said.

Since operations began in 1994, the terminal's gasification capacity has doubled. Currently, it has holds a daily gasification capacity of 37 million cubic meters with a storage capacity of 255,000 cubic meters in three storage tankers.

Deli explained that it takes around 16-17 hours to transfer the large LNG cargoes of 170,000 cubic meters at the Marmara Ereglisi LNG terminal to the storage tankers. The terminal meets 20% of Turkey's daily gas consumption.

Silivri storage facility capacity to increase by around 48%

The Silivri gas storage facility meets around 10% of the country's current gas demand.

However, the facility could provide up to 28 million cubic meters to the country's national gas transmission system.

The storage facility consists of two sections; Degirmenkoy and Kuzey Marmara.

The storage capacity in the reservoirs in Degirmenkoy is 600 million cubic meters and the subsea Kuzey Marmara reservoir has an annual storage capacity of 2.5 billion cubic meters.

"In total, the facility has a storage capacity of 3.1 billion cubic meters per year," Erkan Akbas, the operating manager at the facility, said.

According to Akbas, plans are afoot to increase this capacity to 4.6 billion cubic meters by the fourth quarter of 2022, which will correspondingly raise the daily withdrawal capacity to 75 million cubic meters from the current 28 million cubic meters.

The daily injection capacity in the facility, a figure representing how much natural gas can be stored in the facility daily, has reached 21 million cubic meters but will rise to 45 million cubic meters, he said.

The construction of a 4.2-megawatt wind turbine before the end of the first half of 2022 aims to meet the power demand of the storage facility.