Page 12 - MEOG Week 32 2021

MEOG PROJECTS & COMPANIES MEOG
TPAO drills new well at Sakarya
TURKEY
TURKEY’S energy minister said this week that the country’s national oil company (NOC) has kicked off drilling at a new borehole in the Sakarya gas field in the Black Sea.
Via his social media channels, Fatih Donmez said that the Fatih drillship was in position and state-owned Turkish Petroleum Corp. (TPAO) had begun drilling the Turkali-4 well. “We are one step closer to our goal with each new well we open,” he added.
Turkali-4 is the sixth well to be drilled at Sakarya, which was discovered in August 2020 by the Fatih vessel at the Tuna-1 well, around 170km off the country’s Zonguldak coast.
The Fatih was used to drill the Tuna-1, Tur- kali-1, Turkali-2, Turkali-3 and Amasra-1 wells, while the Kanuni drillship began well-comple- tion operations at Turkali-2 last month following preparatory maintenance at Filyos port.
TPAO discovered 320bn cubic metres of gas at Tuna-1, which was subsequently upgraded to 405bcm two months later and renamed Sakarya. In early June, the company announced that it had found another 135bcm with the Asmara-1 well, taking the total volume discovered so far at Sakarya to 540bcm.
The start of drilling at Turkali-4 follows TPAO lighting the first gas flare at the new field last week and performing the first flow test at Turkali-2.
The Turkali and Asmara wells are part of a 10-well drilling campaign by TPAO designed to achieve first gas by 2023 at a rate of 3.65bcm
per year and a further 30 wells will be drilled to reach an annual plateau of 15bcm by 2025. Local media have begun quoting an anticipated flow rate of 5-10bcm in 2023, though no explanation for the increase has been provided.
Donmez said that a 3D seismic study has been carried out of the 11,000-square km Sakarya field.
Noting the success of drilling, he said that Turkey would continue to explore the Black Sea as part of efforts to ease dependence on imports and, adding that the government is in talks to acquire a fourth drillship to add to its fleet.
“At the end of this year or at the beginning of next year, we can conduct another exploratory drilling in a field farther west than our current position in the Black Sea,” he said.
As Ankara awaits production from its largest hydrocarbon asset, plans are underway to lay a 169km subsea pipeline that will tie Sakarya back to connect to the country’s gas grid.
The midstream plan for the field, according to Donmez will be carried out in three stages. The first of these – designing subsea production facil- ities – is complete, with the foundations of a gas processing facility at Filyos laid in June and the pipeline to connect the two to follow.
The project is of key strategic importance to Ankara which relies on imports for almost 100% of its consumption, which the Economist’s Energy Intelligence Unit (EIU) anticipates grow- ing at an annual average rate of 2.1% between 2021 and 2030.™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 32 11•August•2021