Türkiye’s first floating production platform, the Osman Gazi, will set sail from the Black Sea port of Filyos in Zonguldak province on Saturday, Oct. 17, to begin the second phase of development at the Sakarya gas field, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said.
The platform will be stationed at the field for 20 years and is expected to double domestic gas production to 20 million cubic metres a day, Bayraktar said in a social media post on Thursday.
Timeline for first gas
The minister said the first flare, a key test before production starts, is planned for the end of 2026, with output from the platform due to begin at the start of 2027. That would complete the second phase of the Sakarya development.
The Osman Gazi will process gas about 170 kilometres offshore and send it into the national grid. At current prices, its daily output is worth around $10 million, according to Bayraktar, who put the annual added value at about $3.5 billion.
He said the number of households supplied with domestic gas would rise from 4 million to 8 million once the platform is running.
Background on the Sakarya field
Sakarya, discovered in 2020 by the state-owned Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO), is Türkiye’s largest gas discovery. First gas reached the onshore processing plant at Filyos in 2023 through subsea pipelines, in a first phase that relies on the onshore facility.
The floating platform is central to the second phase, allowing more wells to be connected and processing to take place at sea before the gas is piped to shore.
Türkiye imports nearly all of the gas it consumes, mainly from Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran and as liquefied natural gas, so higher domestic output is aimed at cutting the import bill and strengthening the current account. Ankara has also sought to position the country as a regional gas trading hub.
Even at 20 million cubic metres a day, domestic output would still cover only a limited share of national demand, which typically runs at around 50 billion cubic metres a year. Officials have said further phases at Sakarya and continued exploration in the Black Sea are planned to raise production further.
Sources
Photo: Makalp / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
