Turkish Petroleum (TPAO) has made the largest crude oil discovery onshore Turkey with a find estimated to hold 1 billion barrels of crude, the Turkish company said.
The discovery was made in the southeastern province of Sirnak, which borders the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region in Iraq and Syria.
Turkish Petroleum has drilled an exploration well and has encountered more than 162 meters of light oil-bearing reservoir with API gravity of 41.
The well already produces around 10,000 barrels of oil per day, TPAO said.
TPAO plans to drill back-to-back appraisal wells and conduct well tests to have a full-field development plan until the end of this year. Additional exploration activities are planned for the second half of 2023.
The production target is set for 100,000 bpd, which would be more than double Turkey's oil production.
The exploration success is expected to help achieve Turkey's energy independence, TPAO said in a statement.
Currently, Turkey depends mostly on oil imports for its consumption.
The country is also targeting natural gas independence with recent huge finds of gas in the Black Sea and the start of gas transmission from the Sakarya Gas Field last month.
In April, Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez told broadcaster CNN Türk that the volumes of natural gas that Turkey had found so far in the Black Sea were worth in excess of $500 billion. The huge gas finds would be enough to supply all households in the country for 35 years, or to cover total Turkish natural gas consumption, including from industry, for 15 to 20 years, the minister added.
The newly developed gas fields are set to go a long way toward Turkey's energy diversification. So far, the country has mostly relied on imports to procure energy supply. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has hit Turkey's economy and energy prices hard and has made energy imports much more expensive for Ankara.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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