Energy Minister Berat Albayrak gave the order to start drilling down to 1 million meters in order to unearth Turkey's underground reserves. Along with the ordered drillings, the amount of lignite reserves will go up to 20 million tons.
Energy and Natural Resources Minister Berat Albayrak took action in order to unearth the full potential of Turkey's underground resources. Recalling that they previously jump-started projects to map Turkey's geophysical and geochemical structures, Albayrak gave an order to the General Directorate of the Mineral Research & Exploration of Turkey (MTA) to drill down to 1 million meters in 2017, setting a new record for MTA. The drilling works which will be carried out countrywide will unearth all the underground resources of Turkey, and the new ores waiting to be discovered will be brought into the country's economy. MTA conducted drillings down to 330,000 meters in 2015.
The priority in MTA's drilling goals is to find yet-to-be-discovered resources in Turkey's coal reserves. With the new drilling moves kick started in 2006, 7 billion tons of coal reserves have been found over the past ten years, ranging from 1,250 to 2,500 calories in calorific values. The latest discoveries constitute nearly half of Turkey's 15 billion tons of lignite reserves in total. With this current move, the said reserve is expected to exceed 20 billion tons.
The supply amount of the materials taking an important place in import from the indigenous resources will be also increased with the new drillings. Turkey reserves millions of dollars for the import of many important materials such as iron, copper, gold and aluminum. TL 15 billion and TL 10 billion was spent on mining import in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
In addition to materials with substantial amount of import potential, the government's new move also aims to search and produce the advanced technology raw materials and bring them into economy. Especially the raw materials needed for the nuclear power plants will be obtained from indigenous resources.
