Iran reportedly put a freeze on its natural gas exports to Turkey following last week’s Israeli strike on its biggest gas field, South Pars in the Persian Gulf.

Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg on March 24 reported the pipeline suspension, saying the likely duration of the stoppage remained unclear.

Turkey’s energy ministry declined to comment on the matter to the news service.

Last year, Turkey sourced around 14% of its natural gas from Iran, according to Turkish Natural Gas Distributors Association data.

Gas is piped to Turkey from northwest Iran in the Tabriz–Ankara pipeline, a 2,577-kilometre (1,601-mile) pipeline commissioned in 2001. 

The main suppliers of gas to oil and gas-poor Turkey are Russia and Azerbaijan.

There is now market discussion as to whether piped gas flows from these two countries as well as a range of other deliveries, such as liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments from various sources, will be enough for Ankara to continue to meet gas demand despite the Iranian suspension.

On March 18, bne IntelliNews wrote how a consequence of the Israeli attack could be the disruption of Iranian gas supplies to Turkey and a need for the Turks to raise reliance on LNG imports.

“An unintended consequence of the strikes on Iran’s gas fields? Turkey may be forced to import more LNG,” Stephen Stapczynski, a Bloomberg reporter covering energy and commodities, said in a social media post cited by this publication’s article, pointing to the knock-on effects of the escalating conflict on regional energy balances.

Another issue for Turkey to consider is that last week, Russia’s Gazprom accused Ukraine of trying to use drone attacks to disable two pipelines via which around 130mn cubic metres (mcm)/day of Russian gas flows to Turkey and several countries in southeastern and central Europe.

South Pars is divided between Iran and Qatar. In the US/Israeli war on Iran, the Israelis attacked infrastructure on the Iranian side of the field on March 18. US President Donald Trump later implied that the Israelis had not consulted him on the military strike, though multiple international news reports, based on information from Israeli sources, said that that was not the case. Trump said the Israelis would not continue with such attacks. He spoke after Iran mounted revenge attacks on vital facilities linked to LNG production in Qatar.