Alparslan Bayraktar, the Turkish energy and natural resources minister, said during an event in Amed on Thursday that his country is moving towards energy independence.
“Diyarbakir is an important oil site for us. Nearly 15,000 barrels of oil are produced every day,” Hurriyet news outlet reported Bayraktar as saying. “Hopefully, we will take it even higher with new [oil] discoveries,” he added.
Turkish state media also cited the minister as saying during the same event that the largest discovery Turkey has made is in the area of Gabar mountain in Sirnak province.
“Today, we produce our own oil there. We will further increase its production. We found gas in the Black Sea. Today, natural gas is consumed in Diyarbakır, Bismil, 81 provinces and 860 settlements of Turkey,” noted the minister, stressing that they want to fully rely on domestically-produced gas rather than gas imports from abroad.
Bayraktar said in a separate event on Wednesday that Turkey will conduct three hydrocarbon explorations in the Black Sea later this year.
Sirnak Governor Osman Bilgin said in May last year that new oil reserves were discovered in the province, adding that “exploration-related operations are being carried out in all of Sirnak’s mountains.”
Sirnak is a small province in southeastern Turkey, bordering the Kurdistan Region.
In December 2022, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the discovery of an oil field in Sirnak’s Gabar Mountain, containing an estimated 150 million barrels valued at approximately $12 billion.
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