Officials said Turkey has ordered an oil drilling platform from South
Korea to expand exploration in the Black Sea, believed to have reserves of
10 billion barrels of oil.
They said the platform, reported to cost $1.5
billion, would arrive in Turkey by early 2011.
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"This is a process only to drill oil from one well," Turkish Energy
Minister Taner Yildiz said. "Such efforts are made only for an adventure in
the Black Sea. When we find oil, another process will begin and it will take
eight years."
Under a project headed by the state-owned Turkish Petroleum Corp., the
South Korean rig would join another facility used in crude oil and natural
gas exploration in the Black Sea in 2010. The current operations were meant
to explore for energy at a edepth of 6,000 meters while the South Korean
platform would reach 12,000 meters.