The opening of Türkiye’s first nuclear plant has been delayed after Germany’s Siemens Energy withheld key parts, prompting Russia’s Rosatom to buy them in China, a top Turkish official said Wednesday.
Siemens’s non-delivery could delay launching the Akkuyu power plant’s first reactor by a few months, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar told Anadolu Agency (AA), pointing to the political attitude toward the issue, highlighting it was brought up in the official communication earlier.
Noting that the construction of Türkiye’s first nuclear power reactor has been completed by more than 90%, Bayraktar said: “There are difficulties we face due to the nature of nuclear. Unfortunately, there are also difficulties arising from external sources.”
Bayraktar said that Siemens has key equipment related to the nuclear power plant and the German company delays the delivery of it.
“The equipment is used at the construction site, which provides the transmission of electricity. Unfortunately, it has the effect of slowing down construction,” he added.
“There is a decision taken with such a political attitude on an issue that has no legal basis and is not subject to any international sanctions,” he said, adding: “The issue was raised at the highest level.”
Noting that the company should definitely “pay a price,” Bayraktar said: “Especially a company that has such a strong presence in the Turkish market.”
“So, if the aim here is to impose sanctions on Russia, Türkiye is also seriously affected by this,” he added.
Nuclear energy plays an important role in reaching Türkiye’s 2053 net zero emission target. To this end, the country is planning to build nuclear power plants in two other locations after the first plant at Akkuyu, which is under construction in the Mediterranean province of Mersin.
An intergovernmental agreement was signed between Russia and Türkiye in May 2010 for the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) which will consist of four VVER-1200 power units with a total installed capacity of 4,800 megawatts (MW). Construction began in 2013 and picked up speed in 2018.
Last year, nuclear fuel was loaded into the first power unit. The plant is ultimately expected to produce around 10% of local electricity production.
Though NATO member Türkiye had initially planned to start up Akkuyu’s first reactor in 2023, delays have pushed that back to next year, with the remaining reactors to come online by the end of 2028.
Siemens Energy gave no official reason for withholding the parts, Bayraktar said. It said Türkiye understands that it could be related to sanctions on Moscow. Germany’s sanctions and trade policies appear to be incongruous, he said.
Bayraktar said that Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear energy company, has already struck deals with Chinese companies to produce equivalent parts, though he provided no company names.
“There are alternatives. Rosatom already ordered alternative parts from Chinese (firms), and they will come from China,” Bayraktar said.
Türkiye could consider fines against Siemens Energy over the delay, even though it has worked with the German company for years, he said.
“This attitude will make us question their position in future projects,” he added.
In July, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that Germany was not allowing the export of some parts required for the Akkuyu plant, making them wait at the customs.
“This has seriously bothered us. I reminded German Chancellor Olaf Scholz of that in our bilateral meeting,” Erdoğan told reporters at the time, on his flight back from a NATO summit in Washington.
Interest in gas fields in Egypt
Furthermore, Bayraktar expressed Türkiye is interested in offshore gas fields in Egypt to supply hydrocarbons via Turkish floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) vessels. He pointed to normalized relations between Türkiye and Egypt and recalled that the two countries recently signed deals on energy.
Last week, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi arrived in Türkiye on a landmark visit seen as the next chapter in enhancing ties between Cairo and Ankara, and the two countries have signed multiple deals on cooperation in different fields from transportation to energy.
Bayraktar said that Türkiye and Egypt can cooperate on oil and natural gas and are working on projects.
He also invited countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Qatar to invest in renewable energy projects in the country.
“We will put forward more concrete projects related to these countries,” he added.
“There is a new long-term LNG (liquified natural gas) agreement that we signed with Shell a short while ago and a new long-term LNG agreement that we will sign in the U.S. next week,” Bayraktar said.
“These are the diversification dimensions of the business,” he explained.
He also said Ankara aimed to send its Oruç Reis exploration vessel to Somalia by October to carry out seismic work there as part of a hydrocarbon cooperation deal signed between the countries earlier this year.
Active role, partnerships
Noting that Türkiye has assets abroad, Bayraktar said that in Azerbaijan, Ankara has a partnership in oil and natural gas resources in the Caspian Sea. “Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli is a big oil project that we have been a partner for a long time,” he added.
“We have about 20% partnership share in the Shah Deniz project (in Azerbaijan),” he said, adding that Türkiye has a partnership in three oil fields in Basra, Iraq.
“We have 15,000 barrels of oil revenue per day from there,” he explained.
Noting that Iraq exports over 3 million barrels of oil per day, Bayraktar said: “15,000 barrels is very small. Türkiye needs to get a bigger share from here.”
“We need to be more active, more intense and more active in oil and natural gas fields,” he added.
The Turkish minister also said that Ankara could have a bigger role in oil trade and transportation.
The Turkish part of the old Kirkuk-Yumurtalik oil pipeline, from Silopi to Ceyhan, is 650-kilometer (404-mile) long with a capacity of 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd), he added.
“That’s why we say to our interlocutors in Iraq, especially after the last visit of our President (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan), ‘let’s turn this Development Road there into an energy road,’” he added.
Bayraktar said that Türkiye’s electricity export capacity with Iraq is 300 megawatts and this could increase.
He said that Türkiye’s daily need for 1 million barrels of oil and around 800,000-850,000 barrels of natural gas as oil equivalent can be met from these projects.
“We are carrying out intensive work and diplomacy to meet this need, perhaps through projects in Libya, projects in Somalia, and new projects in Iraq,” he said.
Reducing energy imports
As part of his opening remarks, Bayraktar affirmed the importance of reducing energy imports and lowering current account deficits as part of the government’s new three-year economic strategy which centers on lowering inflation.
Recalling that carrying out activities to increase their own resources within the scope of the goal of reducing the energy import bill, he noted that exploration activities are continuing in the Sakarya Gas Field in the Black Sea region.
Bayraktar stated that a production level of over 6 million cubic meters (mcm) has been reached in the field which will meet the natural gas needs of 2.6 million households, and that there is a daily production of approximately 1.5 million cubic meters outside the mentioned field.
“Our goal is to reach the 10 million cubic meters target in the first phase. We will exceed 7 million cubic meters by the end of September, but we will reach our first target of 10 million cubic meters in the first quarter of 2025,” the minister noted.
He also said that the modernization work of the natural gas platform to be used in the Sakarya field was completed in Singapore and said: “The new floating natural gas platform will arrive in Türkiye around Sept. 26-27. It is currently sailing in the Mediterranean. We aim to double production with it.”
Bayraktar also evaluated the potential closure of Russia’s gas transit via Ukraine to the European Union at the end of the year, saying that the TurkStream pipeline would remain as only option for gas delivery in that case.
This could create serious problems in terms of supply security, according to the minister. He added that this situation could lead to a rise in gas prices in Europe, while also highlighting Türkiye’s role in this regard.
“While we ensure our own supply security by importing gas from as many different sources as possible into our country, diversifying it, and expanding our supply portfolio, we are also working on shipping additional capacity to Europe,” Bayraktar said.
“We have started this. We have started exporting to several countries. We sell natural gas from Türkiye. Apart from that, we supply gas to Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria,” he noted.
