urkey’s ever-growing energy industry continues to draw investments from international institutions. The World Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) have provided a $1.2 billion loan for the capacity expansion project of Lake Tuz underground natural gas storage facility, the Energy and Natural Resources Minister Berat Albayrak announced at a ceremony in Ankara. The storage facility is expected to reach 5.4 billion cubic meters of storage capacity at the end of the capacity-increasing project.

The second phase of the project will be operational in 2019 or 2020 and the third phase is planned to start service before 2023, raising the gas storage capacity of the facility to 5.4 billion cubic meters (bcm), according to Novinite.

Minister Albayrak stressed that the capacity expansion work in other gas storage facilities in Turkey continues. He explained that the construction of the gas storage capacity of the Northern Marmara Gas Storage Facility in Silivri continues after a deal was inked last year in April.

With additional capacity expansions in two facilities, Turkey’s gas storage capacity will exceed 11 billion cubic meters before 2023, making it the country with the highest storage capacity in the region.