Drillship Fatih Makes Huge Black Sea Discovery

Turkey’s Fatih Drillship underway in the Black Sea. Image via Türkiye Petrolleri Anonim Ortakl???

By Selcan Hacaoglu (Bloomberg) President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey has found 320 billion cubic meters of natural gas in the biggest ever discovery in the Black Sea, and hopes to begin production by 2023.

The lira and benchmark share index both gave up gains, though, possibly reflecting disappointment among investors over the size of the deposit.

”We have conducted this operation completely through national means,” Erdogan said Friday in a much-trailed press conference at his office in Istanbul. “We didn’t even rely one bit on foreign sources in drilling operations.”

READ: Cyprus: EU ‘appeasement’ Of Turkey In Drillship Dispute Will ‘go nowhere’

The Fatih drillship located the gas in the so-called Tuna-1 field, he said, and exploration is continuing in other fields.

“The question now is how much of this gas is recoverable,” said Jonathan Lamb, oil and gas senior analyst at Wood & Company, a Czech investment bank. “This is not clear yet. What the market really wants to know also is how much they can produce per year, but I don’t think they are in the position to say that yet.”

The Borsa Istanbul 100 index fell as much as 1.8%, while shares in energy companies including refiner Tupras, Aksa Enerji and Aygaz dropped sharply after the news.

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