Gas trade: Stand-alone win-win for US-Turkey relations
The only foreseeable and quantifiable area in the relationships between Turkey and the United States is gas trade.
In the current chaotic climate of the Turkey-US relationship, there are very few areas that offer foreseeable and stable prospect for the bilateral ties and gas trade is one of them where expertise and analysis still matter, and where mutually beneficial solutions remain a distinct possibility.
In the last three years, a substantial change has occurred in the energy profiles of both countries. While the United States leads the world's gas production growth, Ankara has finally started moving away from a 30-year-long dependency on Russian gas. In 2019, raising its national liquefied natural gas (LNG) import capacity allowed Turkey to undertake the diversification of its supply sources, thereby putting it in a position to readjust its energy mix toward equilibrium, and away from an overreliance on Russia — one of the cruxes of the current relationship.
The rising levels of LNG exports from the United States have also helped contribute to this change. According to the US Energy Information Administration, in just the first four months of 2019, Turkey imported 19.1 million cubic feet (0.9 billion cubic meters) of LNG from the United States — double the entire volume imported by Turkey in 2018. This jump is definitely supported by the interesting prices offered by American LNG distributors. This increase has placed Turkey as the second-largest importer of US LNG in Europe, after Spain.
Much more can be done. The LNG trade between the United States and Turkey has the potential to create a substantial impetus — one that can follow a consistent path in bilateral relations, as strong energy relations tend to develop de facto consistency. (For an example of this, look no further than the historic relations between Turkey and Russia.)
