Page 4 - EurOil Week 22

EurOil COMMENTARY EurOil

Turkey to launch oil exploration

in East Med soon under pact

with Libya

Turkey’s pact with Libya in November asserted its rights in the Eastern Mediterranean

TURKEY TURKEY may begin oil exploration in Eastern “Yavuz continues its operations in Selçuklu-1
Mediterranean within 3-4 months as part of an location in the Mediterranean Sea, which marks
agreement with the Libyan government, Energy the 7th deep drilling activity that is conducted in
and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez the area. Barbaros Hayrettin Paşa and Oruç Reis
said on May 29. seismic vessels are also exploring our seas,” he said.
Speaking at a ceremony to mark the deploy- In May 2019, Turkish-flagged drillships
ment from Istanbul’s port of Haydarpaşa of Tur- began offshore operations in areas off the coast of
key’s first oil-and-gas drillship Fatih to the Black Cyprus. The areas fall entirely within the Turkish
Sea, Dönmez said Turkish Petroleum (TPAO), continental shelf registered with the UN and in
which had applied for an exploration permit in permit licences that the Turkish government in
the Eastern Mediterranean, would begin opera- previous years granted to TPAO.
tions in areas under its licence after the applica- Ankara has on every occasion vowed it wants
tion process was completed. to see energy as an incentive for political resolu-
“Within the framework of the agreement we tion on the island and peace in the wider Med-
reached with Libya we will be able to start our oil iterranean Basin, not as a catalyst for further
exploration operations there within three to four tensions.
months,” the minister said. Turkey is a guarantor nation for the TRNC
In November last year, Ankara and Lib- and has consistently contested the Greek Cypriot
ya’s UN-recognised Government of National administration’s unilateral drilling in the Eastern
Accord (GNA) signed two separate pacts, one Mediterranean, asserting that the TRNC also has
that encompasses military co-operation and the rights to the resources in the area.
other maritime boundaries of the two countries Turkey’s third drillship, Kanuni, arrived in
in the Eastern Mediterranean. Taşucu, Mersin, a coastal city in the Mediterra-
The maritime pact asserted Turkey’s rights nean region of the country, on March 15.
in the Eastern Mediterranean in the face of uni- Following the completion of renewal and
lateral drilling by the Greek Cypriot adminis- upgrade studies, Kanuni, which joined the fleet
tration, clarifying that the Turkish Republic of at the beginning of 2020, is also projected to start
Northern Cyprus (TRNC) also has rights to the operations in the Mediterranean Sea this year,
resources in the area. The pact took effect on according to Dönmez.
December 8. The country plans to conduct five drills in
Dönmez earlier this month said that TPAO the Eastern Mediterranean this year, according
had applied to Libya for an exploration permit to Turkey’s Annual Presidential Programme for
in the Eastern Mediterranean, stressing that the 2020.
exploration would begin as soon as the process “Our two seismic and two drilling vessels will
is completed. continue to work in the Eastern Mediterranean
The minister said that Fatih’s 103-metre long at full capacity. With [Fatih sailing] to the Black
towers had been disassembled in Haydarpaşa Sea, we [have] now bridged the most important
to enable the vessel to have safe passage under gap,” the energy minister said.
the bridges across the Bosphorus and it was pro- In 1974, following a coup aimed at the annex-
jected to reach Trabzon in north-eastern Turkey ation of Cyprus by Greece, Ankara was forced to
on June 1, where it would be reassembled. intervene as a guarantor power on the island. In
“After completing [its] nearly 1.5-month 1983, the TRNC was founded.
preparation period, Fatih will start its first drill- The decades since have seen several attempts
ing in the Black Sea in the Tuna-1 location in to resolve the Cyprus dispute, all ending in fail-
mid-July,” Dönmez said. ure. The latest, held with the participation of the
Turkey will continue to carry on offshore guarantor countries – Turkey, Greece and the
exploration studies which are vital for the coun- UK – came to an end without any progress in
try’s energy independence, he added. 2017 in Switzerland. ™

P4 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 22 04•June•2020