According to the data announced by GAZBİR (Turkish Natural Gas Distributors Association); As of the end of 2023, 84 percent of Turkey's population has access to natural gas, and an average of around 10 million new subscribers have been added to the system every year in the last 1 years. While SOCAR Turkey invested approximately 170 million dollars in total in Bursa and Kayseri in four years, it has reached approximately 1,9 million subscribers to date.
-As SOCAR Türkiye, what are your activities in the field of Natural Gas?
Our SOCAR Türkiye Natural Gas Business Unit started operating in 2019. In this field, we distribute, wholesale and trade natural gas with our companies SOCAR Enerji Ticaret, Bursagaz and Kayserigaz.
With our group companies Bursagaz and Kayserigaz To our approximately 1,9 million subscribers We provide service. Bursagaz, which has approximately 1,2 million subscribers, is the 4th largest natural gas distribution company in our country by number of subscribers. We provide continuous and safe natural gas supply to our subscribers in 11 districts of Bursa, with our network reaching 2023 kilometers by the end of 7.561. In Kayseri, we reach approximately 6.675 thousand subscribers with our 700 kilometer long network. Kayserigaz and Bursagaz from 2019, when we started operations, until the end of 2023. We invested approximately 170 million dollars in total.
According to the data announced by GAZBİR (Turkish Natural Gas Distributors Association); As of the end of 2023, 84 percent of Turkey's population has access to natural gas, and an average of around 10 million new subscribers have been added to the system every year in the last 1 years. Approximately 94% of the population has the opportunity to access natural gas service within our license borders in Bursa and Kayseri provinces where we serve.
-You meet the natural gas supply of two important industrial cities such as Kayseri and Bursa. What will be your investment steps in these regions in 2024?
Bursa and Kayseri, where we carry out natural gas distribution activities as SOCAR Turkey, are important industrial centers of our country and therefore highly popular cities that receive investment and immigration. We continue our network investments intensively in this direction and increase the number of our subscribers day by day. With the rapid development of our cities, we are planning and implementing additional regional investments by increasing our cooperation with the municipality and relevant public institutions.
Together with Bursagaz and Kayserigaz It will reach 2024 thousand 14 kilometers by the end of 770 We foresee. What we plan for 2024 in Bursa our regional investments on a kilometer basis with the updates we made at the beginning of the year We increased it by 80%.
With the positive contribution we will make to the city's air quality with our new regional additional investments, more users will experience the comfort of natural gas. In addition, with these additional investments, we will increase the capacity and employment of our stakeholders and solution partners with whom we work operationally, thus providing positive benefits to all links in our supply and stakeholder chain and to the economy.
In Kayseri, we made our investment plans to provide natural gas supply to all districts by the end of 2024. We will make additional investments in Kayseri on top of our 2024 investment plans. 77 km long additional natural gas line We aim to provide more neighborhoods with safe energy, namely natural gas.
In addition to delivering natural gas to large masses, it is also very important to ensure a safe and continuous supply. To achieve this, we have implemented investments such as a new city entrance station and new steel lines in Bursa to minimize our high-pressure natural gas network in the city and increase supply security. However, we plan to make additional investments to increase natural gas supply security, taking into account the additional investment needs of the districts in our license area that currently use natural gas. We aim to continue our breakthroughs in the coming period and take our business continuity and efficiency even further by digitalizing our processes.
-Your service network is constantly expanding with the number of subscribers. What are you doing to improve your customer service quality?
We aim to further improve our service quality and adapt to changing customer needs in our industry with our strategy of providing end-to-end satisfaction by focusing on solution-oriented and efficiency in our interactions with our customers. We are redesigning the services we offer at our Bursagaz and Kayserigaz Customer Services Centers, Customer Contact Center and websites by making them efficient and user-friendly.
We attach great importance to the use of new technologies to maximize customer experience. In this context, we added the "distance contract" service to our customers' contract service. With distance contracting, our customers can apply from their location 7 hours a day, 24 days a week, by signing their natural gas usage contracts digitally and uploading their application documents, via the Customer Contact Center, the online transactions area on our websites, or via e-government. 50% of our customers who applied to sign a contract preferred this method from the first month. This study was an important one in terms of contributing to sustainability by facilitating customer transactions as well as saving paper.
We also provide the service to citizens in the new investment region in order to facilitate transactions. Our customer representatives will be at the neighborhood headmen's offices on designated days each week to receive subscription applications. In addition, as a company that has implemented important work by focusing on digitalization, we have been providing our customers with the convenience of making their transactions with a phone call without coming to our centers for a long time with the concept of "office-free service".
