Turkish Oil Company TPAO Starts Drilling for Oil, Gas in North Cyprus
The Turkish Petroleum Corporation, or TPAO, began drilling on Thursday at a field in Gazimagusa's Sinirustu village with a ceremony which was participated by Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yildiz as well as Turkish Cypriot President Dervis Eroglu and Prime Minister Irsen Kucuk.
TPAO has said it planned to drill as deep as 3,000 meters at the well which has been named Turkyurdu-1 and the exploration is estimated to continue up to six months.
On September 21, Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Dervis Eroglu of TRNC signed in New York an agreement on the delineation of the continental shelf between two countries in the East Mediterranean.
Under the agreement, TPAO will be able to make three dimensional seismic research and drilling in TRNC land and sea more actively.
The agreement follows a Greek Cypriot move to start offshore drilling for natural gas and oil in the southeast of the Eastern Mediterranean island.
On September 22, TRNC Council of Ministers gave exploration license to TPAO, Turkish Petroleum Corp., to explore oil and natural gas around Cyprus island.
In 2010, the Greek Cypriot administration and Israel signed an accord demarcating their maritime borders to facilitate a search for mineral deposits in the East Mediterranean.
The Greek Cypriot side had signed a deal with U.S.-based Noble Energy to start drilling in an 324,000-hectare economic zone adjacent to the Israeli waters.
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