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Turkey is in talks with US energy supermajor ExxonMobil over a multibillion-dollar deal to buy liquefied natural gas as Ankara seeks to curb its dependence on Russian energy. 

The country, which imports nearly all of its natural gas, is seeking to build a “new supply portfolio” that will make it less reliant on any single partner, Turkish energy minister Alparslan Bayraktar said in an interview with the Financial Times. 

The talks come amid improving relations between Turkey and the US after Ankara dropped its veto on Sweden joining the Nato military alliance and Washington agreed to sell Turkey billions of dollars worth of F-16 fighter jets. They also come as Turkey is seeking to reposition itself as a regional energy hub. 

Turkey would secure up to 2.5mn tonnes of LNG a year through the long-term deal under discussion with Exxon, Bayraktar said, adding that the pact could last for a decade.

Bayraktar said the commercial terms of the Exxon deal were still under discussion, but 2.5mn tonnes of LNG shipped to Turkey would currently cost about $1.1bn, according to pricing assessments by data agency Argus.

The 2.5mn tonnes of LNG under discussion would be enough to cover roughly 7 per cent of Turkey’s natural gas consumption last year, according to FT calculations based on data from the Energy Market Regulatory Authority. Last year, Turkey imported 5mn tonnes of LNG from the US on the “spot” market where energy is bought and sold for imminent delivery, Bayraktar said.

Exxon has ambitious plans to expand its LNG portfolio to 40mn tonnes a year by 2030, about double what it was in 2020.

The company owns a 30 per cent stake in Golden Pass LNG, a new export terminal on the US Gulf coast that it is building with partner QatarEnergy. It has a capacity exceeding 18mn tonnes a year and is due to begin producing LNG in the first half of 2025. Exxon is also pursuing LNG projects in Papua New Guinea and Mozambique. 

Exxon said it had initial discussions with the Turkish government regarding potential LNG opportunities but would not comment on the details of its commercial strategy.

Ankara, which had also enquired with other US natural gas producers about LNG deals, is seeking to “diversify” its natural gas supplies before some of its long-term contracts with Russia expire in 2025 and those with Iran expire the following year, Bayraktar said. 

Turkey relies heavily on natural gas for power generation and industry. Households also benefit from large and costly gas subsidies through state gas company Botaş.

Russia is by far Turkey’s biggest natural gas supplier, accounting for more than 40 per cent of its consumption last year, which mostly arrived by pipelines. Ankara currently has long-term LNG supply deals with Algeria and Oman. 

Turkey has retained strong trade, economic and tourist ties with Russia even after Turkey’s Nato allies shunned Moscow after it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. 

Moscow is also Turkey’s top oil supplier and will own and operate the country’s first nuclear power plant, currently under construction, on the Mediterranean coast. Russia, along with South Korea, both have “serious interest” in a similar nuclear project on the Black Sea, Bayraktar said.

Bayraktar defended his country’s relations with Russia, saying that “competitive” energy deals with Russia have helped Turkey to avoid the energy crisis that gripped major European countries after the war began. 

“For security of supply, we need to get gas from somewhere. It could be from Russia, it could be from Azerbaijan, it could be Iran, or LNG options,” Bayraktar said, adding that “we need to look at the competitiveness edge; which gas is cheaper?”

Bayraktar added that Turkey had made a concerted effort to expand its infrastructure for receiving and storing LNG. About 30 per cent of Turkish natural gas imports last year were LNG from 15 per cent in 2014.

Turkey has also been launching its own exploration and production operations, including a large gas site in the Black Sea and oil drilling in the country’s south-east. The country may later this year begin exploring for oil in the Black Sea as well, Bayraktar said. 

While local projects covered only a tiny fraction of Turkey’s energy needs currently, they had the potential to be “quite a game-changer for us,” Bayraktar said.

Additional reporting by Shotaro Tani in London

FILE – Harvey Weinstein arrives at a Manhattan courthouse as jury deliberations continue in his rape trial in New York, on Feb. 24, 2020. Weinstein will appear in a New York City court on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

John Minchillo/AP

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John Minchillo/AP

FILE – Harvey Weinstein arrives at a Manhattan courthouse as jury deliberations continue in his rape trial in New York, on Feb. 24, 2020. Weinstein will appear in a New York City court on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

John Minchillo/AP

NEW YORK — Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer said Saturday that the onetime movie mogul has been hospitalized for a battery of tests after his return to New York City following an appeals court ruling nullifying his 2020 rape conviction.

Attorney Arthur Aidala said Weinstein was moved to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan after his arrival on Friday to city jails.

“They examined him and sent him to Bellevue. It seems like he needs a lot of help, physically. He’s got a lot of problems. He’s getting all kinds of tests. He’s somewhat of a train wreck health wise,” Aidala said.

A message left with the hospital was not immediately returned Saturday.

Frank Dwyer, a spokesperson with the New York City Department of Correction, said only that Weinstein remains in custody at Bellevue. Thomas Mailey, a spokesperson for the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, said Weinstein was turned over to the city’s Department of Correction pursuant to the appeals ruling. Weinstein had been housed at the Mohawk Correctional Facility, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Albany.

On Thursday, the New York Court of Appeals vacated his conviction after concluding that a trial judge permitted jurors to see and hear too much evidence not directly related to the charges he faced. It also erased his 23-year prison sentence and ordered a retrial.

Prosecutors said they intend to retry him on charges that he forcibly performed oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 and raped an aspiring actor in 2013.

Weinstein remained in custody after the appeals ruling because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

For some time, Weinstein has been ailing with a variety of afflictions, including cardiac issues, diabetes, sleep apnea and eye problems.

Aidala said he spoke to Weinstein on Friday afternoon after he was in transit to New York City from an upstate jail less than 24 hours after the appeals ruling, which was released Thursday morning.

He said his client’s ailments are physical, adding that mentally he is “sharp as a tack. Feet are firmly planted on the ground.”

The lawyer said it usually takes state corrections and prisons officials a week or two to arrange to transport a prisoner.

“He was not treated well. They refused to give him even a sip of water, no food, no bathroom break,” Aidala said. “He’s a 72-year-old sickly man.”

Mailey, the state corrections spokesperson, had no comment when Aidala’s remarks about Weinstein’s treatment were read to him over the phone.

Aidala said he was told that Bellevue doctors planned to run a lot of tests on Weinstein before he can be returned to the Rikers Island jail complex.

The lawyer said he’s scheduled to meet with Weinstein on Monday. He added that he plans to tell a judge when Weinstein goes to court on Wednesday in Manhattan that a retrial should occur after Labor Day.

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Dan Poulter, a Conservative MP and former minister, has defected to Labour, delivering a blow to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak just days before a crucial round of local elections.

Poulter, a mental health doctor, said he was quitting because he could not look NHS colleagues and patients “in the eye with good conscience”, claiming that the Conservatives no longer valued public services.

His defection is a setback for Sunak, who is trying to rally his party before local elections in England and Wales on May 2, with polls suggesting the Tories will suffer serious losses.

Poulter, MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, won his seat at the 2019 election with a 23,391 vote majority over Labour. He said he would continue to represent the seat as a Labour MP and stand down at the next election.

Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, Poulter said he had “no animus” towards Sunak but said that the country needed an early election to place the NHS in the hands of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.

Starmer said he was pleased by Poulter’s decision, revealed on Saturday afternoon, adding: “It’s time to end the Conservative chaos, turn the page and get Britain’s future back.”

A health minister in David Cameron’s coalition government, Poulter said: “I found it increasingly difficult to look my NHS colleagues in the eye, my patients in the eye, and my constituents in the eye with good conscience.”

He added: “The difficulty for the Conservative party is that the party I was elected into valued public services . . . it had a compassionate view about supporting the more disadvantaged in society.

“I think the Conservative party today is in a very different place.”

Asked why he did not stand down immediately as an MP and trigger a by-election, Poulter said: “I thought on balance, because there’s going to be an election very soon, it’s better to work for my constituents through to the end of this parliament.”

Tory sources claimed that Poulter did little work for his constituency or in parliament, suggesting he had defected to Labour partly because Sunak was not intending to give him a seat in the House of Lords.

Sunak’s allies claim the prime minister enjoyed a series of successes last week, setting out policies including welfare reform and extra defence spending, while succeeding in gaining Royal Assent for his Rwanda bill.

Poulter’s defection to Labour will change the political debate, not least because the former Tory MP seems determined to cause damage to Sunak’s reputation on the NHS on his way out.

Since 2019 two other Conservative MPs have joined other parties. Lee Anderson, former deputy chair of the Conservative party, joined Reform UK last month. Christian Wakeford left the Tories for Labour in 2022.

The Conservative party said: “For the people of Central Suffolk and North Ipswich this will be disappointing news. What Dan says is wrong as Sir Keir Starmer has no plan for our NHS.”

A Tory source said: “It’s a shame Dan didn’t make more of an effort turning up to parliament to do the work he’s been paid to do if he feels so strongly about our NHS. Clearly he’s had other plans on his mind for some time.”

“Most of our MPs thought he’d already left parliament.”

The Conservatives are confident of winning the seat at the next election, which is regarded as one of the safest in the country.