Trade volume for the spot natural gas market on Turkey's Energy Exchange Istanbul (EXIST) hit Tuesday a record high, generating approximately TL 29 million. This is the highest since the exchange went online on Sept. 1, 2018, EXIST data confirmed Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the total spot trade volume amounted to 20.99 million cubic meters, marking a volume rise of 854% over the previous day when 2.2 million cubic meters of natural gas was traded. Trade on Monday's natural gas market amounted to TL 3.20 million.

On July 27, 2018, EPİAŞ began to publish natural gas transmission data through its online disclosure platform. It also started to share transport nomination, virtual trade, capacity, reserve, actualization and stock amounts, on a daily basis.

In September 2018, EXIST launched a gas stock exchange that is currently used by an increasing number of natural gas traders as well as Turkey's Petroleum Pipeline Corporation Company (BOTAŞ) to supply natural gas to balance the transmission system. This evolving platform also offers a daily reference price for the gas market.

With different pipeline routes coming from Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran as well as LNG supplies from the U.S., Algeria, Qatar, Nigeria and others, Turkey is one of the big gas markets in its region with over 50 billion cubic meters per year. In addition to ensuring supply diversity, Turkey has already started working on capacity expansion for storage to ensure a more stable market in supply and demand curves.

Moreover, to establish a well-functioning gas trading hub, Turkey is currently in need of developing hedging mechanism for traders against currency fluctuations since imports are paid for in foreign currency and contracts are still by and large oil-indexed.