Turkey's leading energy voice: get to know Montel-Foreks

How did Montel-Foreks begin? 

As the Turkish energy market has grown, market players have required ever increasing amounts of data. Historically, the Transmission System Operator and Energy Market Regulatory Authority published some data, but this was far from regular, meaning market participants struggled to get a consistent view of what was going on. Ultimately, this meant a situation where there was very little transparency in the marketplace, despite growing levels of interest.  

People who now use Montel-Foreks were (back then) spending hours in the mornings to gather irregular and unstandardized data from various websites manually. Clearly, there was an obvious need of a service to provide all data from one reliable place. 

Initially, it was the Chair of the Energy Trading Association, Mustafa Karahan’s idea to gather Montel and Foreks together to offer this kind of a service. Once the parties met, the joint venture grew naturally as both businesses found collaborating easy. 

Why is the service aimed at a specific part of the world? 

The Turkish market is very unique due to its cultural and geographical position as the meeting point between East and West. Owing to the pivotal role the country plays in gas transit particularly, we decided Montel-Foreks should be aimed at Turkish users initially. 

That said, we also cover the power, gas, coal and oil sectors from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia, Iraq, Iran, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and other South Eastern European countries. 

What makes Montel-Foreks so useful? 

Primarily, it's time saving. Even now, it remains very hard for a trader to get all data from the market to give them a complete view. Thankfully, we’ve solved that issue! 

Secondly, both the news and data on our platform are delivered in real-time, so issues affecting market movements are reported faster than anywhere else. And that’s without taking into account the fact that (in my humble opinion) our news is the best in the market. We have an unmatched network of traders, brokers, government officials and other energy professionals, meaning we’re always on top of price-moving news. 

What is the biggest/most exciting news story you’ve broken/worked on? 

Turkey is a very exciting country news-wise, so there are always interesting stories we are working on! However, one that stands out to me was when BOTAS (Turkish Petroleum and Natural Gas Pipeline State Company) set the USD rate constant as 6.5 Turkish Lira for power plants during August 2018. It happened during a crucial time, when Turkish Lira has lost some 20% of its value against the USD during August 2018. 

Not only did we break the news hours before the company’s official statement, but the story proved crucial as the company always sold natural gas in USD currency and this was an unexpected move.  

Our breaking news was quoted by many main media news outlets and quickly became a game-changer. This change was a turning point for the market considering the effects it created on asset-based hedging strategies and trading volume. 

What does the future look like? 

We would like to see the market grow further and be able to attract more investors. As proud as we are of our locally-based reporting team, we would also like to grow our news desk and data service to report from Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Azerbaijan in real-time as well.