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Türkiye on Saturday sent its first Floating Production Unit (FPU), Osman Gazi, to its station in the Black Sea, a move President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said will double the country's Black Sea gas output and supply one in three households with domestic gas from 2027.
"Today, we are opening a brand-new page in our energy history. We are sending Osman Gazi, essentially a floating industrial facility, off to its duty station in the Black Sea," the Turkish president said in a video message to a ceremony at Filyos Port.
"Osman Gazi is the first factory of the Blue Homeland, the maritime counterpart of our Century of Türkiye vision," he noted.
With Hormuz closed and Black Sea shipping under attack, raising domestic gas output is central to Türkiye's energy security, as Ankara seeks to cut reliance on imports and Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar sets a long-term target of 1 million barrels of oil a day.
President Erdogan described the 298.5-meter-long, 56-meter-wide platform, which will be crewed by 140 personnel, as a floating energy fortress.
"With its 21 different units, it will process the gas it receives from wells in the Sakarya Gas Field and send it to Filyos through pipelines laid under the sea," he said.
"Natural gas production in the Black Sea will double to 20 million cubic meters per day, and starting in 2027, one in every three households will use our domestic natural gas," he said, adding, "I thank all my colleagues who worked on this visionary project and wish success to all our personnel who will serve on the platform."
The platform will operate around the clock for 20 years, contribute $3.5 billion a year to the economy and meet the needs of 8 million households, Türkiye's Communications Directorate stated.
"Our goal is to ignite the flame of the Sakarya Gas Field in Osman Gazi’s flare tower before the end of this year," Bayraktar said at the ceremony.
"Developments in the world reveal more every day the strategic importance of reducing external dependence in energy and developing one’s own resources. Now every country sees energy supply security as a national security issue," he added.
"On the one hand, we want to increase our existing reserves in the Sakarya Gas Field and bring them to our country in the most efficient way; on the other hand, we continue drilling to make new gas and oil discoveries in different parts of the Black Sea," Bayraktar stated.
"Today Türkiye is a country with the world’s fourth-largest energy fleet with six deep-sea drilling ships, two seismic research vessels and support ships," the Turkish energy minister said.
"There is a Türkiye producing natural gas in the depths of the Black Sea, oil on the snowy peaks of Gabar, and searching for oil beyond the borders of the Blue Homeland, on the shores of Africa, in Somalia," he noted.
"Despite covert or open embargoes, all kinds of obstruction, smears and double standards, we held tight to the ideal of a fully energy-independent Türkiye," he added.
Turkish Petroleum has doubled its output in the past five years to about 300,000 barrels a day, Bayraktar said. "We will raise this figure to 550,000 barrels in 2028, but Allah willing our goal will be to raise it to 1 million barrels a day," he said, noting exploration in Iraq, Azerbaijan, Somalia, Pakistan, Hungary, Bulgaria, Oman and Libya.
He thanked the engineers, technical teams and some 7,000 workers on the project.
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