Türkiye Deceived Putin With Gas

Russia may be left without oil products.

In Russia, there is an unprecedented shortage of petroleum products on the market. Things are also bad with gas supplies, oil and gas analyst Mikhail Krutikhin said.

According to the expert, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin was going to export more gas, making Türkiye a new gas “hub”, but as a result, only Ankara benefited from the supplies.

“When Erdogan needed to get additional arguments in the election campaign, which was quite recently, in order to remain in the presidency, he told Putin: “Oh, you know, there is a wonderful idea about the hub. Türkiye will be a hub for Russian gas. But for this we want good discounts on the price of gas that Türkiye buys, and vacations until 2024, and to pay nothing for gas”. It worked. That is, Putin did not understand what a hub was, he fulfilled all these promises. And now Erdogan says that Türkiye itself is turning into such a hub and receives gas from several sources at once: Russia (in two directions, Blue Stream and Turkish Stream, Azerbaijan ..., from Iran (and not only Iranian gas, but also even Turkmen). ... And then Türkiye distributes this gas. In fact, it turned out to be a hub. It sends part of the gas through gas pipelines through its territory, further through Greece, Albania and southern Italy. They have the opportunity to send gas as far as Romania, Hungary, Moldova and even Ukraine — through the old pipeline, which used to drive gas from Russia to Türkiye... That is, the Turks control it, Russian gas flows through the pipeline,” says Krutikhin.

He also notes that problems with Russian oil have begun. While the West imposes sanctions on the export of crude oil, the Kremlin is moving closer to banning the export of oil products from the country.

“There is a shortage inside Russia. Not only fuel oil: gasoline, diesel fuel at gas stations... A month ago, the Russian government issued a warning to oil companies that if such appetites for export abroad continue, Russia may not have enough gasoline. We, the government said, will impose a ban on the export of petroleum products (such as gasoline and diesel fuel). Now every now and then there are reports from the Crimea and the southern regions of Russia near the front line, because there it is fuel for armored personnel carriers, tanks, military vehicles ... The military needs all this there to continue hostilities. And there are already not enough civilians,” he added.

The situation with oil and gas in the Russian Federation — this is necessary to know

According to the results of the first half of 2023, Gazprom's gas business became unprofitable. The reason was a sharp drop in export earnings and a reduction in gas transportation volumes.

Throughout the Russian Federation and in the temporarily occupied Crimea, there are problems with gasoline. On August 22, 2023, fuel (both diesel and gasoline) completely disappeared at Russian gas stations.