REUTERS
The Turkish Stream pipeline construction project has been suspended, Russia's Energy Minister Alexander Novak told Russian news agency TASS on Thursday.
"Negotiations have been suspended," the minister said.
Earlier, the Russian Economic Development Ministry denied the suspension of negotiations between the two states.
At this, the current supplies of Russian gas do not fall under Russia's embargo and are carried out in accordance with the contract.
On December 1, the Russian government took a decision to suspend activities of the intergovernmental Russian-Turkish commission on trade and economic cooperation headed by Energy Minister Alexander Novak from the Russian side.
As TASS reported earlier with reference to a source familiar with the process of negotiations, consideration of the Turkish Stream project will be suspended due to termination of operations by the intergovernmental commission between Russia and Turkey.
The intergovernmental agreement between Russia and Turkey on the Turkish Stream gas pipeline project was developed within the framework of the intergovernmental commission. It was expected that the intergovernmental agreement could be already signed in December or January. Russia considered it reasonable to sign the agreement on two lines while Turkey insisted on including only one line into the document.
The agreement to build the pipeline within the Turkish Stream project was reached in December 2014. According to the initial plan, the capacity of four lines of the pipeline will amount to 63 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year, with 16 bln to be supplied to Turkey and 47 bln - to the gas hub on the Turkish-Greek border.
In October, Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller said the company would build only two lines of the pipeline, as the Nord Stream-2 pipeline can cover Europe's growing demand for gas, according to the report.
At the same time it was announced that the negotiations on signing the intergovernmental agreement were postponed due to the political situation in Turkey, that at that time did not have an approved composition of the government.
As earlier reported, on December 1, the Russian government published a decree specifying the economic sanctions against Turkey. It includes Turkish goods banned from import to Russia from January 1, 2016. Joint gas and nuclear projects that the both states have been implementing are not mentioned in the document.