Page 12 - MEOG Week 42
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MEOG PROJECTS & COMPANIES MEOG
Turkey raises estimate of Tuna gas
discovery, but scepticism remains
TURKEY TURKEY has raised its estimate of gas reserves become significant) have taken place within a
in a field off its Black Sea coast to 405bn cubic consortium that would inevitably include oil
metres (bcm) after discovering an additional majors with substantial deepwater offshore
85bcm, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on expertise.”
October 17. Nearby examples include Bulgaria’s Khan-As-
Erdogan said in August that the field con- paruh and Romania’s Neptun Deep, both of
tained an estimated 320bcm of gas, making it which were discovered by international con-
the biggest natural gas discovery ever made by sortia with a thorough knowledge of deepwater
Turkey, which is almost entirely dependent on projects.
oil and gas imports, largely from Russia, Iran and The report added: “Even the Turkish national
Azerbaijan, though recent months have seen the oil company TPAO has previously preferred to
country turn more and more to LNG shipments, team up with Shell or ExxonMobil to assess its
with the US becoming a growing provider. Black Sea reserves. However, in the case of Tuna
If the gas in the Tuna-1 field (likely to be the Turkish NOC has spudded the well and
renamed Sakarya) announced by Erdogan can be assessed its reserves completely alone, creating
commercially extracted, it could transform Tur- an unprecedented event in the history of Black
key’s dependence on energy imports, but there Sea exploration.”
is considerable scepticism about the discovery. More than a quarter of Turkey’s long-term gas
contracts expire next year, including imports via
Lack of evidence pipeline from Russia’s Gazprom and Azerbaijan’s
An October 13 article by OilPrice noted that Socar and an LNG deal with Nigeria.
there has been “no witness to back it [the discov- Turkey has said that given the Tuna-1 discov-
ery] up”. It added: “Most of the Black Sea’s major ery, it will be expecting gas suppliers to be more
projects (or projects which were perceived to flexible on pricing in renewing contracts.
UK Oil & Gas signs deal
for Turkish licence
TURKEY UK Oil & Gas has announced that it has exe- It was cited as describing AME as a “highly
cuted the participation and joint operating credible and successful” Turkish operator, with
agreements with Aladdin Middle East (AME) a 60-year in-country history.
for its 50% interest in Turkey’s 305-square-km Produced crude was expected to be of Arab
Resan Licence, and the respective oil appraisal medium-to-light quality, which currently real-
and exploration programme. ised prices of around $46 per barrel, marginally
The AIM-traded firm reportedly said that above the $41 current Brent price per barrel.
after its successful October 2 equity raise, it Oil could be readily exported on existing
would now fund its agreed share of key ini- roads to Turkey’s Batman refinery 80 kilometres
tial preparatory operations so that the first oil to the west.
appraisal well, currently planned as Basur-3,
could be drilled in early 2021.
It noted that Xodus Group’s June report cal-
culated the licence to contain “materially signif-
icant” recoverable discovered and undiscovered
prospective resource volumes, with calculated
aggregate mean and high gross cases of 43.4mn
barrels and 84mn barrels, respectively.
UKOG said it would pay the first $5m of drill-
ing and seismic costs, which equated to $0.115
per Xodus recoverable mean case net barrel.
P12 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 42 21•October•2020
