Gabar oil to meet 12 pct of Türkiye’s needs: Minister

ISTANBUL

The oil reserves found in the southeastern Gabar area are big enough to meet 12 percent of Türkiye’s needs, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez has said.

The daily production capacity at the Gabar field will be around 100,000 barrels, Dönmez said, adding that the output will increase to some 180,000 barrels.

The gross reserve at the Gabar field is 1 billion barrels, the minister said in an interview with private broadcaster Habertürk.

Refineries in Türkiye are ready to process the newly found oil, according to Dönmez. “From there, the oil could be sent to the refineries in İzmir or Kocaeli. We also have a refinery in the province of Kırıkkale. We can process the Gabar oil there.”

Dönmez added that Turkish refineries have the daily capacity to process 40 million barrels of oil.

“We will conduct further exploration activities in the fields south of Gabar.”

‘Important for energy independence’

The new discovery represents the largest oil discovery onshore in Türkiye, with further prospects to be explored in the frontier Cudi-Gabar area, the state-owned TPAO said in a statement.

TPAO will drill back-to-back appraisal wells and conduct well tests to construct the full-field development plan until the end of 2023, the statement added.

Test production from the Aybüke Yalçın-1 exploration well there already started as of the end of April 2023, boosting oil production in Türkiye by more than twofold, according to TPAO.

This exploration will help Türkiye achieve its objective of energy independence, it added.

The economic value of the newly found oil in Gabar is around $70 billion to $80 billion, Melih Han Bilgin, TPAO’s Chairman and CEO, told reporters.

“We plan to open 80 or 100 more wells in this field, which is some 36 kilometers square meters in size.”

The cost of the well is $2.5 billion to $3 billion, he added.

Bilgin said that they built a temporary pipeline there. “We will transfer the oil to the Akçay field as the road conditions around the well are rough. We also built a temporary storage facility on the site.”

There are 1,800 wells in Türkiye producing oil, according to Bilgin. “Those wells produce 50,000 barrels of oil,” he added.