ENERGY: Turkey to conduct five drills for oil and natural gas in 2020

Turkey has announced it will carry out five drills for oil and gas next year including areas off Turkish-occupied north of Cyprus.

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According to Ankara’s official programme the target is to carry out 2D seismic surveys of an area of 3,000 kilometres and 3D surveys of an area of 20,207 kilometres.

Within this framework, Turkey plans to open five wells in these areas by conducting explorations for shale gas and methane gas.

Turkey will spend TRY 13.9 bln (EUR 2.17 bln) worth of investment in the energy sector over the course of next year, making energy the second highest area of public investment after transportation in 2020.

An investment of 13 billion 864 million Turkish Liras is expected in the energy sector in 2020.

The Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant is included among the targets of the programme. Its first unit is expected to function in 2023 and the others by the end of 2026, with a difference of one year.

Turkey’s demand for electricity is estimated to increase to 329,6 billion kilowatts per hour (kw/h) in 2020, while the demand for the current year is estimated to be 315,2 billion kw/h.

The estimated share of natural gas in electricity production is 29.5% in 2019 and 27.2% in 2020. The share of renewable energy resources in electricity production is expected to increase to 36.4% in 2020.