ANKARA
Turkey has consumed the highest volume of natural gas in a single day Tuesday in the country's history, with 213 million cubic meters used, Turkey's energy minister said Thursday.
"Consuming the highest volume of natural gas in a single day with 213 million cubic meters is a risk and we are responsible for eliminating this risk," Taner Yildiz said at a conference in Ankara.
The average daily use of natural gas in Turkey is 193 million cubic meters.
Yildiz stated that Turkey had used one billion cubic meters of natural gas in five days, while some countries use only 3 to 4 billion cubic meters of gas in a whole year.
In addition, he said that the fluctuating oil prices were not due to technical reasons but political ones.
"Some are losing and some are winning; oil producing countries have lost $975 billion within six months and consumer ones have won the same amount of money," Yildiz stated.
The global benchmark Brent crude oil price has continued to fall since June, from $116 to $51.20 per barrel mark Thursday -- the lowest since April 2009.
He said that dropping oil prices had affected positively gasoline and fuel oil prices.
"Gasoline prices dropped 12 times to an amount of 0.97 lira ($0.42 per liter) and fuel oil prices declined 9 times to around 0.84 lira ($0.36) within six months," he said.
Yildiz also emphasized Russia's role in Turkey's energy security.
"Both countries are mutually significant for each other. The Ukraine crisis is important for Turkey, as well. More than half of Turkey's natural gas demand comes from Russia and half of that amount is delivered to Turkey via Ukraine," he said.
Turkish imports around 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia.
