TURKEY’S energy minister has issued a call for the supply of oil and gas in the Black Sea to be protected after three Russian tankers were targeted off the Turkish coast.

Alparslan Bayraktar said that Turkey was concerned not just by the threat to shipping but also to two undersea pipelines, Blue Stream and Turk Stream, that carry natural gas from Russia to Turkey.

Referring to the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline between Russia and Germany, Mr Bayraktar pointed out Turkey’s reliance on imported gas.

“We call on all parties to keep the energy infrastructure out of this war because it’s part of people’s daily lives,” he said during a news conference on Wednesday.

“We need to keep the energy flows uninterrupted in the Black Sea and the [Bosphorus and Dardanelles] straits.”

Ukraine said that its naval drones struck two tankers on November 28. The third vessel was struck on Tuesday as it headed toward the Turkish port of Sinop.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the earlier attacks as a threat to “navigational safety, life and the environment, especially in our own exclusive zone.”

Russian oil and gas provide nearly half Turkey’s total energy needs.

The Nato member has come under pressure from Washington to reduce its reliance on Russia’s hydrocarbons.

When President Erdogan visited Donald Trump in September, the US president urged him to ease ties to Moscow, including in the energy sector.

During the same trip, Turkish companies signed a multibillion-dollar deal with US firms to buy liquefied natural gas.

Defending Turkey’s purchase of Russian oil and gas, Mr Bayraktar said Russia had proved to be “a very reliable supply to the Turkish market” since Turkish households started switching to gas in the 1980s.

He said, however, “it’s not a secret that we need to have a balanced supply portfolio. We don’t want to rely on one supply country or a few countries.”