Turkey to begin exporting Azerbaijani natural gas to Syria

Turkey will begin exporting Azerbaijani natural gas to Syria starting Saturday, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said Wednesday.

"We will begin exporting Azerbaijani natural gas to Aleppo via Kilis," a province in southeastern Turkey near the Syrian border, the minister said.

The new Islamist government in Syria, which overthrew Bashar Assad in December, is seeking to rebuild the country devastated by nearly 14 years of civil war. The conflict has severely damaged Syria’s electricity infrastructure, leading to power cuts that can last more than 20 hours a day.

The two countries had already announced earlier in May that they had reached an agreement to route Turkish natural gas to Syria via a border pipeline connecting Kilis in Turkey to Aleppo, with a supply capacity of six million cubic meters per day.

Gas-rich Azerbaijan is a longtime ally of Turkey, which maintains close ties with the Syrian transitional government.