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Turkey to continue search for more gas reserves in Black Sea, says Erdogan

October 21, 2020 at 3:21 pm

Fatih Drill ship is seen at sea after the President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the discovery of major natural gas reserves in the Black Sea, Turkey on 21 August 2020 [Celal Güneş/Anadolu Agency]

Turkey will be continuing its search for more natural energy reserves in the Black Sea region despite already having made two major discoveries, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced.

The president made the announcement at a news conference yesterday after a cabinet meeting in the capital Ankara, in which he said that the Turkish drill ship Fatih is set to begin new operations next month.

The vessel, he said, would be exploring for further resources at another well in the Black Sea named Turkali 1 and would likely conduct even more explorations following that due to data reportedly suggesting the existence of more undiscovered reserves.

Erdogan’s comments, which also touched on other topics such as the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict and the coronavirus pandemic, follow on from the initial announcement made by Turkey’s Energy Minister Fatih Donmez yesterday, in which he said “We will continue to carry out new exploration activities in a location called Turkali 1 at the same site. We will drill about 40 wells here.”

Turkey’s plans to conduct further energy explorations into the Black Sea come after Erdogan revealed in August that the country had discovered a massive 320 billion cubic metres of natural gas in the Tuna-1 area, followed by the discovery of another 85 billion cubic metres last week.

The total amount of gas reserves Turkey has discovered therefore amounts to 405 billion cubic metres, which Erdogan has assured will help relieve the nation’s economic woes and allow it to be less dependent on imports of foreign energy.

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