Turkey, currently an energy importer, should be able to meet its needs with domestic resources Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız said on Saturday.
Speaking at a press conference regarding the oil exploration process to be initiated in the Black Sea with the cooperation of Turkish Petroleum Corporation, or TPAO, and Brazilian state oil company Petrobras, Yıldız said that nearly 90 percent of Turkey's oil and natural gas was imported from other countries.
"The only way to prevent this is to carry out activities in oil and natural gas exploration in order to develop domestic resources," Yıldız said.
Noting that the cooperation between TPAO and Petrobras started nearly 4 years ago, Yıldız said TPAO would become a company that drills oil and reaches natural gas by the year 2020.
When questioned about the expected contribution of the oil drilling process to Turkey's economy, Yıldız said, "This is an exploration process and we may not reach oil or natural gas in the end. However, the data provided so far indicates that we need to carry out such a study. If we reach these resources, it will amount to at least 20 percent of Turkey's imports."
Elaborating on the structure of the partnership between TPAO and Petrobras, TPAO's Director General Mehmet Uysal said, all the costs would be covered by Petrobras during the exploration process and the Brazilian company would be reimbursed if oil and natural gas were found in the region.
Uysal also said that production investments would be shared by the two companies.
Speaking at the press conference, Cecile Lansverk, Norway's ambassador in Ankara, said that he was proud to see Norwegian technology on Turkish waters.
Lansverk said that "Leiv Eiriksson," the oil drilling platform to be used in Black Sea, had proven its success in the deep waters of many countries and had managed to find oil in 85 percent of its drilling activities.
In April 2009, state-owned petroleum companies, Turkey's TPAO and Brazil's Petrobras, signed an agreement for the exploration of oil in the Black Sea.
The deep-water platform "Leiv Eiriksson," which set off from Norway months ago, travelled through the Bosphorus Strait and reached the Black Sea province of Sinop on Saturday.
The platform will stay in the region for five years and drilling of the Sinop 1 well is scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2010.
Turkish officials are very hopeful about drilling operations in the Black Sea, which is believed to have huge underwater oil and natural gas reserves.
Recent seismic researches estimate a 10-billion barrel oil reserve in the Black Sea
