BY BLOOMBERG
A recently discovered natural gas field in the Black Sea is set to provide nearly a third of the country’s domestic needs when it reaches peak production capacity by 2027, Energy Minister Fatih Donmez said, unveiling details of his ambitious timeline to bring last year’s find on stream.
The country may be able to start with initial annual production capacity of 3.5 billion cubic meters of gas in 2023, Donmez told Bloomberg News in an interview. The aim would be to increase that to about 15 billion cubic meters annually within four years of first production, roughly one quarter of the European Union’s (EU) output today.
State-run energy company Turkiye Petrolleri AO plans to drill 40 wells over four phases in the Sakarya field, which is estimated to have recoverable gas reserves of about 540 billion cubic meters. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has touted the find — the biggest ever in the Black Sea — as a boost to Turkey’s USD 765bn economy. He has promised to start production in 2023, the centennial of the founding of modern Turkey, in a bid to boost his re-election campaign the same year.
