Turkey sticks with oil reach despite BP failure

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

A boat nears an offshore platform on the Black Sea. BP has announced that it could not find oil in its explorations off Turkey’s northern coastline. AA photo

Turkey will continue oil and gas exploration in the Black Sea, Energy Minister Taner Yıldız has said. The minister’s comments came after global energy giant BP recently said it had failed to find any oil reserves in the marine regions off the northern Turkish coastline.

“Another firm has just told us that it wants to [explore oil deposits] in the Black Sea. TPAO [the Turkish Petroleum Corporation] will carry out the work there. [Oil] firms have various choices. We respect that, but we will continue

exploration work in the Black Sea,” Anatolia news agency quoted Minister Yıldız as saying on Nov. 9.
Yıldız did not mention the name of the firm but said the firm has not done exploration in the Black Sea before. Any data regarding the geological structure of the region is valuable for the ministry, he added.
Separately, he said Istanbul will host some 7,000 participants for the World Energy Council Congress, which is held every three years,
in 2016.