Reuters/21-08-2020

ISTANBUL: Turkey announced its biggest natural gas discovery, a 320 billion cubic metre (11.3 trillion cubic feet) Black Sea field which President Tayyip Erdogan said was part of even bigger reserves and could come on-stream as soon as 2023. If the gas can be commercially extracted, the discovery could transform Turkey’s dependence on Russia, Iran, and Azerbaijan for energy imports. Erdogan said his country was determined ultimately to become a net energy exporter. “Turkey has realised the biggest natural gas find of its history in the Black Sea,” he said in a widely anticipated televised address from an Ottoman palace in Istanbul, linked by video to a drill ship in the western Black Sea. “This is Turkey’s biggest-ever find by a wide margin, and one of the largest global discoveries of 2020,” said Thomas Purdie of consultancy Wood Mackenzie.