Ankara’s drilling piques Athens’ interest
Athens is closely observing Ankara’s plans to enhance its fleet for hydrocarbon exploration and extraction.
Ankara has made the Black Sea the focus of its efforts to explore for gas and oil. The Black Sea is where almost all of its floating drilling vessels are currently active, the latest being the seventh-generation Abdulhamid Han.
According to Turkey’s Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar, Ankara has prioritized the Black Sea, followed by the Eastern Mediterranean and ultimately the Aegean. This designation has not gone unnoticed by Athens, which is concerned that if Greek-Turkish relations deteriorate further, Turkey may resume exploration in the Eastern Mediterranean. In any case, the recent tension south of Kasos (which was unrelated to operations on the continental shelf) reminded Ankara that the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean strikes some sensitive chords and might spark a crisis at any moment.
Meanwhile, the Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) is developing hydrocarbon storage and offloading capacities. Indeed, it proceeded in 2023, in an agreement with a Norwegian company, to purchase a floating unit.
This floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit sailed from Singapore about two weeks ago and is now sailing to the Istanbul shipyards.
For safety reasons, the route will be around Africa, and from there via Gibraltar to the Mediterranean, as the passage of the Suez Canal poses a risk to TPAO’s investment because of volatility in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden due to attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
The floating unit will undergo some retrofitting in Istanbul before being deployed at the existing Sakarya field in the Black Sea.
Also of interest for Athens are the announcements about TPAO’s investigations and operations in areas such as Libya. And, in particular, in maritime areas within the Libyan side of the boundaries set in the so-called Turko-Libyan memorandum signed by Ankara and the interim government in Tripoli.
A few weeks ago Turkey also announced an agreement with the Somali government for exploration off the coast of Somalia.
In both cases, however, Ankara’s discussions with governments which in reality do not even represent all of their countries except in name prove that the Turkish announcements on Libya and Somalia primarily conceal political expediency and not the possibility of actual exploration in the field.
