Sönmez also stressed that Putin's proposal of a gas hub in Türkiye is "extremely important."
"For 4-5 years, we have strengthened this goal by working hard day by day and brought it to this day. We can bring natural gas from many parts of the world. We have become the center of attraction of the world," he said.
"We supply gas from 15 different countries, from the US to the Gulf countries and, even rarely, from the Asia-Pacific. That's enough resource to be a gas hub. Especially after we increase the LNG capacity, maybe we will give it to neighboring countries," he added.
"Distribution and trading center are confused at times. I can say that our infrastructure is enough. Other countries have wishes and desires to send gas to Türkiye."
Sönmez also said that the gas dependency of Türkiye will be decreasing to %70 soon.
"If nothing goes wrong, we will deliver the first gas to our citizens in the centennial year of our Republic, all our aim and effort is working in that direction," he said.
"God willing, when we connect our gas to the system our costs related to this will be more clear and we will present it to our President."
"We import 99 percent of the gas we consume. In other words, when the Black Sea gas comes into play in a product that we are almost completely dependent on, and when we start full production, we will be using our own gas, 25-30 percent of the total consumption," he stressed.
"Our foreign dependency on natural gas will decrease to 70 percent. But if discoveries come as a result of new research, of course, this rate will decrease, even more, I hope."
Minister Sönmez also highlighted Türkiye's place in the world regarding mines, saying that the country ranks well in the world in terms of mineral diversity.
"We have about 70 kinds of mines. While our mine exports were approximately 700 million dollars in 2002, it reached 5.90 billion dollars last year," he said.
"We will probably exceed 6 this year and break a record; because as of the end of October, we had an export of 5.4 billion dollars."
