Ankara-based oil and gas company Arar discovered 40 billion cubic feet (around 1 billion cubic meters) of natural gas reserves in Turkey's Hatay province, in southern Turkey, the company's chairman said on Friday.
Fatih Alpay, chairman of Arar told Anadolu Agency that Hatay is destined to be an important city for energy in Turkey and confirmed the natural gas discovery was made only last week.
"I'm sure Hatay will be more important than the Thrace region in Turkey because Hatay has one very important difference as it also has oil reserves," Alpay said.
He explained that domestic investors are not participating in oil and gas exploratory works in the area due to insufficient know-how. However, he urged that local companies collaborate with experience companies to participate in more activities.
"The gas we find here contains about 1 billion cubic meters of reserves. We are currently running tests on this gas and maybe these reserves will result in being a lot more," he explained.
The chairman said that Arar's target is to transfer around 100,000 cubic meters of gas into the Turkish gas system.
"We've seen 500,000 cubic meters of gas per day enter the Turkish system with one of our projects in the Thrace region," he noted.
The oil and gas company has worked in the region for about four to five years, and is the only domestic company in Turkey which has not diversified into other areas. Alpay asserted that the company will continue to focus only in this sector.
- Bank support in Turkey
Alpay said that he would like to see more support from banks to undertake investments like those in which his company conducted and resulted in finding natural gas.
He explained that Arar spent $160 million in the oil and gas sectors in the last 10 years, but lamented the fact that it is not possible to obtain loans from banks in the natural gas and oil exploration phase, adding that support is need after discoveries are made.
"It is very important to support domestic searchers in such a sector," he said.
(Anadolu Agency)
