Turkey has added another 75 Bcm to its tally of Black Sea gas reserves with the announcement of a new discovery at the Göktepe-3 well in 3500-m water depths.

President Tayyip Erdogan announced the discovery at an event in Istanbul on 17 May, saying the new reserves could cover Turkey’s residential gas demand for 3.5 years while also advancing the country’s goal of becoming a regional energy export hub, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

State-owned Turkish Petroleum Corp. (TPAO) owns and operates the Abdulhamid Han drillship which made the discovery 69 km west of Turkey’s flagship Sakarya gas field and 165 km offshore.

The drillship is the most advanced in Turkey’s fleet and one of five 7th-generation ultradeepwater drillships globally, according to TPAO.

Göktepe-3 is Turkey’s second-largest single natural gas discovery in the Black Sea, after the country’s main deepwater producer, the Sakarya field, and ahead of Çaycuma-1. The find boosts Turkey’s Black Sea natural gas reserves to 785 bcm, up from 710.

With Sakarya’s daily output now at 9.5 million m3, the project is moving into Phase 2 which aims to double production by drilling 30 additional wells and deploying a floating production unit to process gas offshore. The processed gas will then be delivered to the grid via pipeline, according to Wood, TPAO’s integrated project management partner. Phase 1 is now complete, with production flowing from a subsea system that includes 10 wells, two 16-in.-diameter offshore pipelines spanning 165 km for monoethylene glycol transport, an umbilical, shore crossings, and an onshore processing facility located in the Filyos Industrial Zone in the Çaycuma district of Zonguldak province, according to Wood’s website.

Once Phase 2 is brought onstream, the Sakarya gas field is expected by 2026 to be capable of meeting up to 30% of Turkey’s domestic natural gas demands, the Warsaw-based Centre for Eastern Studies noted in a study published last year.

Turkey currently imports 90% of its domestic natural gas consumption.

"There has been a step-by-step drilling program to explore promising structures around the Sakarya field," Oguzhan Akyener, head of the Ankara-based think tank Energy Strategies and Policies Research Centre, told Anadolu.

"We've developed serious expertise in the Black Sea, and existing infrastructure makes it easier to bring new reserves online."

With domestic supply top of mind, TPAO formed a joint venture with US independent producers Continental Resources and TransAtlantic Petroleum in March to expand onshore production of unconventional oil and gas in the Gabar area of the Diyarbakir basin.

In the longer term, Ankara aims to position Turkey as a gas transit and re-export hub for Europe. Recent infrastructure investments now enable the country to import gas from suppliers such as Russia, Azerbaijan, the US, and Qatar, blend it, and re-export it to southeastern Europe.

For example, the Trans-Balkan pipeline—which previously transported Russian gas to Turkey—has been operating in reverse since the start of the war in Ukraine, now channeling Turkish gas exports to Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Serbia.

"These developments are consolidating Turkey's position as a natural gas trading hub. Each new discovery should be seen not just in terms of energy, but also within this broader geopolitical framework," Akyener told Anadolu.

Drilling, logging, and testing operations began at Göktepe-3 on 27 March and lasted approximately 50 days, Turkish state news reported.

Initial reserve assessments will remain at the testing level until full development plans are established, said Akyener, who estimated the value of the newly discovered 75 Bcm of reserves at $30 billion, based on a price of 15 Turkish lira per m3 at current exchange rates.