“The Hydrocarbon Exploration and Production Agreement between Turkey and Somalia” was signed with the participation of Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar and Somalia’s Petroleum and Mineral Resources Minister Abdirizak Omar Mohamed.
Minister Bayraktar noted the following in his speech at the ceremony;
As you all know, we have made significant progress in our country’s oil and natural gas exploration in the last 8 years. One of the important elements of the strategy we started in 2016 and call the National Energy and Mining Policy was the issue of oil and natural gas exploration on Turkey’s own lands and seas with its own means and capabilities, its own ships, its own drilling and seismic vessels, and we have made significant progress in this regard as Turkey.
“OUR OIL PRODUCTION TARGET IN GABAR IS 100 THOUSAND BARRELS PER DAY”
Turkey has become a country with the most important deep-sea vessel fleets in the world today. Turkish Petroleum continues its explorations in our seas very intensively with 4 deep-sea drilling vessels and 2 seismic vessels. As you all know, Turkey made a very important natural gas discovery in the Black Sea immediately after the studies it carried out in the Mediterranean as a result of these explorations. In August 2020, we made the most important natural gas discovery in the history of the republic and in a very short time, we reached the production stage in a way that will meet a part of our country’s natural gas needs. We are currently producing 5.5 million cubic meters per day from the Sakarya Gas Field. But of course, in addition to the gas field, we have also made an important discovery in the oil field. In September 2021, and right now, we have reached a daily production of 45 thousand barrels in 41 wells in Gabar. Hopefully, we aim to increase this production to 100 thousand barrels as soon as possible.
“TURKEY WILL HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO EXPLORE OIL AND PRODUCE IT WHEN IT FOUND”
But our country’s needs are increasing. Our country’s needs are much beyond this. For this reason, I have expressed from time to time that Turkey will enter a more active process not only in exploration on its own lands and seas, but also in natural gas and oil exploration in certain geographies, in certain countries, through partnerships or on its own, with our own national oil companies, our natural gas company. We are clearly seeing an example of this today. We see that the agreement we made with Somalia, which we made between the ministries in this hall on March 7, 2024, has become more concrete as of today. And I have stated it before. Somalia, especially the Somali Sea Offshore, is an area that we think is a very important oil and natural gas source. We have been given such a mission to further advance our country’s relations with the Somali State in line with the goal set forth by our President and Presidents, as befits two brotherly countries, and within this framework, we have signed our agreement on three blocks in the Somali Offshore here today. Our General Manager of Turkish Petroleum signed this agreement on behalf of Turkey and thanks to this, we currently have three blocks in the Somali seas, each block representing an area of 5 thousand square kilometers. Turkey will have the exclusive right to explore and produce oil when we find it.
“WE ARE SENDING OUR SHIP ORUÇ REİS TO SOMALIA”
We have signed a production sharing agreement. Two of these blocks we mentioned are approximately 50 kilometers offshore, the other is 100 kilometers offshore, three fields. In the first stage, we will conduct a seismic activity, a three-dimensional seismic activity in these fields. For this, we are sending our Oruç Reis ship to this region, hopefully in late September, early October. They will conduct a very important seismic study there that will last for months, and according to the evaluations that emerge as a result of this study, hopefully this work will result in drilling and hopefully a discovery after drilling, and it will be a very important and historic step for both Somalia and our country.
In these 3 areas and 3 blocks that we have determined, the sea depth is approximately 2 thousand meters, 3 thousand meters in places and after the seabed, we will have carried out a drilling activity up to 4 thousand meters, in other words, in a total of 7 kilometers from the sea surface. Of course, you need to have serious experience to be able to carry out such a complicated operation. Thank God, with the developments within the framework of the strategy that we have put forward since 2016 that I mentioned, we are now in a position to carry out these activities with our own engineers, our own technical team and equipment. We will carry out these in these blocks in Somalia, God willing.
Oruç Reis will set off for Somalia with a team of approximately 50 people. But not only Oruç Reis, but also 5 support ships will definitely accompany him during this operation. Of course, it would be right for me to state that our naval forces will also participate in these ships here. I would like to take this opportunity to hope that this signed agreement will be beneficial for both countries. I attach great importance to it. Of course, Somalia, as you know, we were in Niger yesterday. We signed an agreement there regarding oil. But we will try to make up for our country’s shortcomings in this area with these activities that we will carry out in other geographies and other regions. I hope that this agreement will bring goodness to our nation and the Somali people.
