Attack cuts Turkey's Shakh Deniz flow: Update 2OREANDA-NEWS. Natural gas flows to Turkey from Azerbaijan's Shakh Deniz field have been cut after a pipeline attack, the third time a Turkish pipeline has been hit since a ceasefire between Ankara and the Kurdish PKK movement broke down last month.

The attack on the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline took place early today in the Sarikamis region of northeast Turkey and "caused the flow of gas to be cut", the energy ministry said. It blamed the PKK for the attack. The ministry did not give any details of the damage done to the pipeline or the nature of the attack. The region hosts the main pipeline delivering Azeri gas to Turkey's national gas system.

The pipeline was due to be shut for maintenance, energy minister Taner Yildiz said yesterday, meaning that the attack has had little immediate effect on Turkey's gas market. The works, scheduled for 3-23 August, were co-ordinated with shutdown of the BP-operated Shakh Deniz field in Azerbaijan on 2-22 August.

Turkish authorities have blamed the PKK for explosions on the crude pipeline from Iraq to the Mediterranean terminal at Ceyhan and a pipeline taking gas to Turkey from Iran as well as for other attacks on electricity distribution.

The 29 July attack on the oil export pipeline halted flows of Kirkuk crude. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq exported 585,000 b/d of crude through the pipeline in July. The KRG said yesterday that it had lost \\$250mn in revenue as a result of the attack, so far. A blast hit the Iran-Turkey pipeline on 27 July. Iran said yesterday that flows had resumed. Turkey is contracted to buy 9.6bn m?/yr of gas from Iran, equivalent to 20pc of its annual consumption.

The main Shakh Deniz export pipeline has a capacity of 7bn m?/yr. It is a major strategic route and there are plans to expand its capacity to 20bn m?/yr to carry Caspian gas to southeast Europe. Gas flows were previously disrupted by an explosion in 2012.

The Turkish gas market has been largely unperturbed by the attacks on the Iranian and Azeri gas pipelines. Most of the country's supply is delivered under long-term contracts whose prices are linked to oil, and gas trade is focused mainly on short-term balancing. Turkey has been oversupplied for much of this summer because high hydroelectric output has displaced gas-fired power generation.