Turkiye's drill ship Yavuz will set sail on Friday for its first operation in the renowned Turkali-2 well in the Black Sea where 540 billion cubic meters of natural gas was discovered in 2020, sources told Anadolu Agency on Thursday.
Turkiye's two other drill ships, namely Fatih and Kanuni, will also conduct simultaneous operations in the Sakarya Gas Field in the Black Sea.
The Yavuz drill ship will be responsible for upper well work in the field, drilling 10 Turkali wells as part of Phase I of the Black Sea gas production plan.
The drill ship, one of 16 of its kind in the world, will lay a "Christmas Tree" formation in the seabed.
“Christmas Tree� is an assembly of valves, spools and fittings used for oil and other types of wells and is named for its resemblance to a decorated tree at Christmas.
This process is expected to take 45 days for each well.
After laying the Christmas Tree in the seabed, the wells will then be ready for connection to the pipeline which will carry the gas to Filyos in the Zonguldak province located in the country’s Black Sea region from where the gas will be distributed to the country's national gas grid.
The seabed pipeline will stretch around 170 kilometers from the production facility to onshore in Filyos.
With the Phase I completion, production is estimated to be around 10 million cubic meters per day.
Turkiye plans Phase II with the addition of 20 or 25 wells in the field allowing total production to reach 40 million cubic meters daily.
Turkiye, which is almost 99% dependent on gas imports, consumed about 60 billion cubic meters of gas last year.
- Yavuz drill ship
In 2018, Yavuz had been added to the inventory of Turkish Petroleum Corporation to increase sea exploration capabilities.
As a sixth-generation ultra-deep sea drill ship, Yavuz has a length of 230 meters and a width of 36 meters.
By Nuran Erkul Kaya
Anadolu Agency