Turkey’s will address the deficit from BOTAS, the state-owned crude oil and natural gas company, if Turkey gets natural gas discount from Russia, said Turkey's energy minister Wednesday.
 “We have asked for discount on the sale of natural gas from Russia in a meeting in Moscow”, said Turkey’s Energy Minister, Taner Yildiz in the Energy Supply Security and Southern Gas Corridor Panel in Ankara.
Turkey highly depends on Russia for its natural gas supply which is operated mostly by BOTAS.
“The decrease of prices for crude oil and natural gas are important for our consumers, however, we will primarily fix the Petroleum Pipeline Corporation of Turkey - BOTAS’ deficit," he said.
23rd tanker of Kurdish oil is loaded
Yildiz said that the 23rd tanker of oil from the Kurdish region in Iraq, exported from the port of Ceyhan, has been loaded and added that a total of 17.3 million barrels of oil have been transported for sales.
Yildiz said the current flow speed is 240 thousand barrels per day and the capacity of the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline is 1.5 million barrels of oil daily.
“The more oil is pumped from the pipeline, the more Iraq will be stable,” he said.
The Baghdad and Erbil administrations continue their dispute over the oil pumped from the region. The Kurds in the Erbil administration insist that it is their right to trade oil independently whereas the central government says it is against the constitution of the regional government to sell oil themselves.
Ankara maintains that their actions are fully legal and the oil pumped to Turkey belongs to Iraq as a whole.