Turkiye’s largest offshore discovery could be transformational for country in supporting its growing gas demand, says expert
Given the challenging ultra-deep water terrain of Turkiye’s Sakarya gas field and the fact that the project is a greenfield, producing gas within two years of discovery seems impressive, said Rami Khrais, an oil and gas analyst at the data analytics and consulting company GlobalData.
Khrais told Anadolu Agency that Turkiye’s largest offshore discovery could be transformational for the country in supporting its growing gas demand.
“The fast development of Sakarya’s reservoir reflects Türkiye’s desperate need to diversify its energy sources specially after the global energy crisis resulting from the Ukraine war,”he said.
He said that the current under-construction gas processing plant in Filyos can only handle 350 million cubic feet per day.
“Additional onshore gas processing plants are therefore required to handle the output increases during the second phase of the project,” he added.
Khrais said that Turkiye imports almost its entire gas needs from abroad, with Russia meeting 40% of the country’s total gas demand.
“The startup of Sakarya Phase-2, which is expected to produce 1.4 billion cubic feet per day around the end of the current decade, is set to help Turkey mitigate its extreme reliance on external suppliers for natural gas. It will also help alleviate the mounting pressure on the local customers suffering from increasing inflation,” he explained.
Khrais underlined that the discovery of Sakarya in the Black Sea might pave the way for new finds in Türkiye’s deep waters.
“The exploration campaign in the area has resulted on June 2021 the discovery of a northern extension of Sakarya, known as ‘Sakarya North’, with estimated reserves of 4.8 trillion cubic feet,” he added.
Welcome news for energy decision-makers
The intention to begin production of the Sakarya field by early 2023 will presumably be welcome news for Turkish energy decision-makers, according to Jonathan Elkind, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center for Global Energy Policy and a former energy official in the Clinton and Obama administrations.
“It’s reported initial production (10 million cubic meters per day, 3.65 billion cubic meters per year) will represent a solid, but incremental, addition to Turkey’s natural gas supply,” he said.
Elkind said that this is especially important in a period when the country’s gas demand is projected to grow and “when global gas markets are tight in the wake of Russia’s attack on a peaceful neighbor, Ukraine.”