Turkey has discovered oil in three new onshore wells over the last month, the nation’s president announced Thursday.
The oil has been found at two wells in the southeastern Diyarbakır province and at a third site in the northwestern province of Kırklareli, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told a meeting on Istanbul's Democracy and Freedom Island.
The find will add 6,800 barrels of oil to the nation’s daily output, Erdoğan said. “Our domestic average daily production goes above 61,000 barrels of oil,” the president added.
Some 2,800 and 3,000 barrels of oil will be produced daily from Akoba-1 and Yenişehir-1 wells in Diyarbakır and 1,000 barrels of oil from the Misinli-2 well in Kırklareli, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez tweeted following Erdoğan's remarks.
The find comes in the wake of the country’s largest-ever natural gas discovery after its drilling ship, Fatih, last year found 405 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas in the Tuna-1 well in the Sakarya gas field, located about 100 nautical miles (185 kilometers) north of Turkey’s Black Sea coast.
Engineering studies are ongoing to bring the Black Sea gas ashore. Turkey is determined to connect the gas to the nation’s transmission system by 2023.
The first gas flow from the field is expected in 2023, with an envisaged annual gas flow of 5-10 bcm.
The field is expected to gradually increase to reach a production plateau of around 15 bcm as of 2025, which is sufficient to meet 30% of the nation’s annual gas demand.
Dönmez on Monday triggered prospects the country could be announcing a new gas discovery in the Black Sea.
“Let us wait for June for the update. The works will be completed in June,” the minister said.
