Turkey sends third drillship to Black Sea

Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez has revealed that the third Turkish drillship Kanuni has set sail from Istanbul on Friday en route to the Black Sea, Turkish media reported.

Dönmez noted that the ship is to have some maintenance work at the Port of Filyos on the sea’s coast, before starting its mission at the Sakarya gas field.

Turkish Daily Sabah newspaper reported Dönmez indicating that Kanuni will join the drillship Fatih, which also set sail from the same location on 29 May for the Black Sea, where the vessel discovered 320 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas within only one month.

“The reserves discovered at the Tuna-1 well in the Sakarya gas field were later revised up to 405 billion cubic metres and with that, we finalised our first drilling at Tuna-1,” Dönmez disclosed.

The discovery of this size could meet Turkey’s household gas demands for over 20 years, Dönmez explained, adding that to date, Turkey has produced 16.8 bcm of gas, but has succeeded in discovering 24 times more gas from one single drilling.

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The Daily Sabah also reported that the Fatih kick-started drilling earlier this month at the Türkali-1 borehole, a new location in the Sakarya gas field.

It also reported Dönmez on Wednesday stating that within the scope of hydrocarbon exploration and production activities carried out on land and sea, 76 exploration, production and detection wells were opened in the first nine months of 2020.

Three of these were at sea and 73 on land, and about 186,000 metres of drilling was carried out.