Turkey will speed up work to overcome regulatory hurdles that have
delayed its first nuclear power plant project, planned to be built by
Russia, Energy Minister Ali Rıza Alaboyun told Reuters on Nov. 16,
adding that they still aim for it to become operational by 2022.
"The
uncertainty after the June 7 election prevented us from smoothing out
the issues. But the work will begin again from next week and the legal
hurdles will be addressed once the new government is formed,” Alaboyun
said on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Belek, in the southern
coastal province of Antalya.
"The [start] date is 2022,” he added.
Alaboyun’s
comments came after a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin
and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the G-20 Summit.
Alaboyun
noted that Erdoğan and Putin spoke about the planned Turkish Stream gas
pipeline project, about which many question marks linger.
"We are
not against the project. We just need time for some matters to be
clarified in the project, such as how many routes will be online … In
the end, this pipeline will pass through several countries, including
some European countries and Turkey,” he said.
Last month, Russia
decreased the project’s capacity from 63 billion cubic meters (bcm) to
31.5 bcm, but Alaboyun said there had been no formal talks about such a
change.
"No formal application has been submitted to us. So we
continue to evaluate the project in its first draft version. Russia did
not mention anything about the number of routes either yesterday,” he
added reports Hurriyet Daily
(balkans.com)