Türkiye has the strongest energy infrastructure in Europe thanks to the intense investments in this field, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said, describing Türkiye as the most trustworthy and efficient bridge between source countries and the global markets.
In his speech at the second Istanbul Natural Resources Summit on May 22, Erdoğan explained the country’s expanding energy investments inside and outside Türkiye including oil and natural gas explorations.
“We turned Türkiye into one of the strongest energy infrastructure through LNG [liquified natural gas] terminals, FSRU [Floating Storage and Regasification Unit] facilities and pipelines,” Erdoğan said.
Türkiye will increase the capacity of the LNG terminals to 200 million cubic meters from current 161 cubic meters and invest in more infrastructure in all other fields, Erdoğan said. “Just like in the field of defense industry, our objective is to gain full independence in energy,” he added.
The war between Russia and Ukraine since 2022 and the war between U.S.-Israel and Iran have negatively impacted the energy security and energy trade in the world, Erdoğan said, underlining that all these geopolitical conflicts have proven Türkiye’s role as a credible alternative route.
“Türkiye stans as the strongest bridge as well as a junction point between the source countries and the countries that need all these resources. These geopolitical incidents have once again proven and strengthened this role of Türkiye,” Erdoğan underlined.
Türkiye changed its energy paradigm after the adoption of national energy and mining policy in 2016, the president recalled, explaining that this paved the way for Türkiye to conduct oil and gas explorations with its own offshore energy fleet and found huge natural gas reserves in the Black Sea.
Erdoğan also underlined that Türkiye has expanded its energy investments and drilling operations to other countries and started its foreign oil drilling activity in Somalia. “We are also working with the government of Syria in the field of energy,” he stressed.
Türkiye also intensified its efforts to explore oil reserves in the southeastern Anatolia, especially in Gabar district and Diyarbakır, Erdoğan said, stressing that the elimination of the terror problem will further allow the country to expand its production capacity.
