ISTANBUL: Turkish Energy Minister Fatih Donmez said on Saturday the country’s energy imports could fall drastically as a result of a major gas find in the Black Sea.
More discoveries could be made down the line, he said. Incidentally, Qatar is an important supplier of LNG to Turkey. “With the discovery, we expect a serious fall in imports. We have established the groundwork for our citizens to use natural gas at much more economic costs,” Donmez told reporters.
He added: “There is a new area of 6,000 sq. km ahead of us. The evaluation of our experts is that we may see similar structures there, too,” Donmez said in Istanbul.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan announced the discovery of an 11.3 trillion cubic feet gas field on Friday that could come on stream as soon as 2023, He said Turkey was now keen to become a net energy exporter.
If the gas can be commercially extracted, it could transform Turkey’s dependence on Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan for energy imports, which cost the country $41 billion last year. Naturally, any reduction in Turkey’s energy imports would also boost government finances and help ease a chronic current account deficit that has helped drive the Turkish lira to record lows against the dollar.
Donmez stated: “We can already say the gas we will produce ourselves will be more economic than the gas we import. It is inevitable for prices to fall where the product is abundant.”