Turkey ‘ready for int’l offers on Med Sea gas’

ANKARA

Turkey is ready to hold talks with international actors regarding the transfer of gas from eastern Mediterranean, immediately after the United Nation’s registration process on the Ankara-Tripoli agreement finalizes, the country’s energy minister has said.

“Once [the registration process] is complete, we will promptly license the areas in the region. We also have procedures regarding the oil law. Within this context, if international actors, and those carrying out activities in [the eastern Mediterranean] want to cooperate with Turkey and Turkish Petroleum, then we can discuss these,” Fatih Dönmez said in an interview with state-run Anadolu Agency.

Ankara is open to establish dialogue with every actor in eastern Mediterranean, except Greek Cyprus, Dönmez said.

“We will then fairly make the sharing,” he said.

Dönmez also said that it is possible to restrict maritime jurisdiction by agreement with littoral states, yet without a concord, the countries are able to declare their own continental shelves.

“Both procedures end in the U.N. with an application. Before, we had regions we sent to U.N. as well as a declaration of our continental shelf in the eastern Mediterranean. If we count Turkish Cyprus too, this is the second one. We have an agreement with Turkish Cyprus regarding the region on the island’s northwest,” he said.

The minister also said that with the memorandum of understanding (MoU) Turkey brokered with Libya on Nov. 27, 2019, Ankara has “upended the balances” concerning the sharing of resources.

“In a way, they were trying to exclude both us and Libya. We said, ‘No, we have rights here and we will protect them. We are in this game’,” he said.

Underlining that both Turkey and Greek Cyprus have licensed some areas and there were a few coincidences,” Dönmez conveyed that Ankara has been continuing its search and drilling activities “without interruption.”

[HH] ‘TANAP gas flow can begin by end-2020’

Regarding gas activities, the minister said that Turkey is ready to transfer Azerbaijani gas to Europe with TANAP project, as long as European countries complete their natural gas pipelines.

“We think gas flow can start by the end of 2020,” he added.

The TANAP Project, dubbed the “silk road of energy,” will provide the transfer of Azerbaijani gas to Europe. Even though commercial gas flow is not expected to commence until the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) is finalized, test runs for gas flows have begun.

On Turkey’s ongoing drilling activities on land, Dönmez conveyed that a hydraulic fracturing method has started to be implemented, in addition to the classic practices.

“The first result was yielded from [the southeastern province of] Diyarbakır. We plan to continue [in 2020] as well,” he said.

“We can easily strip the oil stuck between rocks,” he added. The minister also stated that with the new fracturing method three or five times more oil is being extracted when compared to traditional activities.