‘We have detected signs indicating there may be oil in Black Sea’

Türkiye's Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar made evaluations about the energy agenda on a private television channel on Friday. Here are the highlights from Minister Bayraktar's speech: ''We have set strategic goals in exploration and production. Firstly, there will be no unexplored territory left in Türkiye. We have decided to go to areas where exploration has been abandoned before and evaluate those areas with a different approach. Gabar is the result of this strategy.'' 'We have said that we will definitely be in our seas, especially in deep-sea exploration, with our own ships. Until that day, we did not have any exploration in the Mediterranean. We had it in the Black Sea, but we had searches with international companies. We have created our own fleet, so we have turned Turkish Petroleum into a company that now has one of the world's most important marine fleets.' ''The Gabar discovery is the largest discovery in the history of the Republic of Türkiye. Our Şırnak province has by far become the highest oil-producing province in Türkiye. Turkish Petroleum was producing 33,000 barrels of oil at the beginning of 2016. Today, Gabar alone has surpassed a daily production of 40,000 barrels. Our goal is for Gabar to reach a daily production of 100,000 barrels by the end of the year. Intensive work continues on this issue. When we reach 100,000 barrels in Gabar, speaking in today's oil prices, it is an economic size of 3 billion dollars. We are not importing this, it stays in our country.'' ''We have wells planned in Hakkari, Van, the northwest of Gabar, and right on the border. We have a very ambitious exploration program for 2024. We will open 140 wells in 2024. Hopefully, we will add new reserves from these wells to our existing reserves.'' ''The Iraq-Türkiye Pipeline is a reflection of our neighborly relations with Iraq dating back to the 1970s. It is an important project for the region and the global oil market. The project has been stalled due to the wars Iraq has experienced. We have always kept the section of the pipeline within our borders in working order. We have conducted maintenance work for the entire pipeline. We have completed the necessary maintenance in locations affected by earthquakes.'' ''On Monday, our President will visit Baghdad. We will also be in the delegation with him. We want this pipeline to be fully utilized. Iraqi oil and the oil produced by Türkiye need to reach Ceyhan.'' ''Somalia is a place where we believe there may be oil reserves in the Somali Sea. We will start seismic work and aim to conduct deep-sea drilling in 2025.'' NATURAL GAS SUPPORT