TPAO to drill 150 wells this year

ISTANBUL

Turkey’s state-owned energy company TPAO aims to drill 150 wells this year, the company executive has said.

“This will mark the biggest number of wells TPAO drills in the history of the Republic of Turkey and we see this as a challenge,” Melih Han Bilgin told members of parliament’s commission on public economic enterprises.
Some 95 of those onshore wells will be drilled for exploration activities and the remaining 55 wells will produce oil, according to Bilgin.

The real gamechanger, however, will be the offshore exploration activities, he stressed.

Turkey’s fourth drillship will soon be added to the country’s inventory, the other three drillships, namely, Fatih, Yavuz and Kanuni, are continuing their activities in the Black Sea, Bilgin said.

“Focusing on offshore activities is paying off and the Sakarya gas field [in the Black Sea] is the result of such efforts.”

TPAO’s daily oil production is 170,000 barrels and has undertaken investments worth $17.5 billion between 2012 and 2021, Bilgin said, adding that the company’s revenues over the same period amounted to $19 billion.

Oil production rose by 50 percent and the company’s profit amounted to 3.12 billion Turkish Liras (around $202 million) in the first quarter of 2022, the executive said.

Bilgin recalled that the company’s profit, which stood at 4.4 billion liras in 2018, was 1 billion liras in 2019 and 1.56 billion liras in 2020. Last year, TPAO reported a profit of 1.57 billion liras.

He also noted that TPAO carries out nine projects in four countries, including Azerbaijan, Iraq, Russia and Turkish Cyprus.