TRNC Energy Minister Sunat Atun flew to Istanbul on Monday afternoon to sign an energy deal to lay an undersea electricity cable link between Turkey and the TRNC.
Atun signed the deal with Turkish Energy Minister Berat Albayrak on the sidelines of the 23rd World Energy Congress in Istanbul.
The details, including the route, the length and the cost of the project, will be discussed by a consortium of experts later on. The framework agreement will help be the first step to enable the TRNC to connect with European electricity interconnection systems in the future, according to official sources.
“The TRNC’s energy needs grow day by day, and this project with Turkey will allow us to meet the electricity demand problem more flexibly,” said Atun in a recent statement. “In the forthcoming days, we will meet and work with the Turkish Energy Minister on a protocol to bring electricity to the TRNC from Turkey via an undersea cable. The protocol will include a recycling agreement, meaning that extra electricity produced in the TRNC will be sold to Turkey in the same way,” he added.
Atun said that it would be cheaper to buy electricity from Turkey than to produce it on the island. Costs would be cut by a third, he said, noting that the TRNC had paid 2 million TL for fuel over the past four years, to produce its own electricity.
Ankara-Anatolia News Agency, BRT
