In the first quarter of 2020, Russia has delivered over 1.32 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Europe via TurkStream pipeline. Bulgaria has started receiving Russian gas via TurkStream pipeline as of 1 January 2020. In March alone, gas deliveries to Europe reached 428 million cubic meters.
At the end of January, TurkStream has delivered one billion cubic meters of gas to Turkey and Europe. About 54 % of this volume was delivered to the Turkish gas market and about 46 % to the Turkish-Bulgarian border. The average flow into Turkey was about 20 million cubic meters per day or 7.3 billion on an annual level and 17 million cubic meters per day into Bulgaria or 6.2 billion cubic meters per year.
The pipeline is planned to replace the Trans-Balkan pipeline which had been using Ukraine as a transit to supply gas to Turkey, Bulgaria and southeastern Europe. TurkStream aims to expand the Bulgarian network and connect it to Serbia to transfer the Russian gas to the Serbia-Hungary border. It is estimated that the annual 25 billion cubic meters of gas flowing through the Trans-Balkan pipeline will drop and up to 19 billion cubic meters per year will be removed from the Ukrainian transit throughout 2020. The TurkStream natural gas pipeline was officially launched on 8 January, while commercial deliveries started on 1 January. The project emerged as an alternative for South Stream pipeline project which was cancelled in December 2014 due to non-compliance with EU legislation. The construction of TurkStream pipeline was agreed between Gazprom and Turkish state-owned gas company BOTAS in December 2014. New pipeline will be constructed under Black Sea towards western Turkey. Capacity of the pipeline will be some 63 billion cubic meters annually, where some 14 billion cubic meters (one line) would be supplied to Turkey and remaining amount to Greece-Turkey gas hub. From this hub, natural gas will be supplied to both Bulgaria and Greece. However, in October 2015 Gazprom halved the proposed capacity of TurkStream gas pipeline to 32 billion cubic meters of gas per year, while Turkey insisted on the construction of just one line, with the option for the second line in the future. The final agreement envisages the construction of two lines (one for gas supply directly to Turkey and the other for gas supply to Europe) with the capacity od 15.75 billion cubic meters of gas per year each.
