A total of 8 wells in the Mediterranean have been carried out by the Turkish drilling rigs as stated by the Minister of Energy of Turkey Alparslan Bayraktar.

The drilling may not have had significant findings, according to the minister, but this does not mean that they are giving up on the Eastern Mediterranean, reports SKAI’s correspondent in Istanbul, Manolis Kostidis.

“There are discoveries, we are doing new drilling. The Mediterranean is the first step of our strategy to go to areas that have not been explored in the past with our ships”, the Turkish minister indicated indicatively, adding that in total there have been “8 deep sea drillings in the Mediterranean. But the locations we have drilled in the license areas granted by the TRNC to Turkish Petroleum – we have drilled in the south of the island of Cyprus, we have drilled in the west and in the north – in all these areas and in all the explorations that we have made in the area of ​​our own continental shelf, unfortunately, we have not made a discovery that expresses a significant economic size in 8 surveys”, pointed out with a laugh Alparslan Bayraktar.

He also noted that this does not mean “that we have given up on the Eastern Mediterranean, we will persistently and stubbornly continue these investigations throughout this area designated as the ‘Blue Homeland’. Our current priority relates to the discovery we’ve made and getting that discovery back into production as soon as possible. We focus on the Black Sea and Sakarya. We have never ignored the Mediterranean. A pillar of our exploration and production strategy is certainly exploration in our own fields, in our seas and on land. Another pillar is investigations abroad, especially in Libya. We made a deal with Somalia. We also have research plans in the Somali seas, off-shore.

Our goal is to make a seismic research activitya maybe within this year and then move into drilling activity in the next few years. We have a multidimensional research and production strategy,” he concluded