Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Friday Turkey discovered its biggest ever natural gas field containing 320 billion cubic metres in the Black Sea, adding there is a strong possibility of other finds in the area.
"Now I want to share our good news with you: Turkey has realised the biggest natural gas finding of its history in the Black Sea," he said, adding Turkey aims to bring it to use in 2023.
"This reserve is actually part of a much bigger source. God willing, much more will come. As a country that depended on the outside for gas for years, we look to the future with more security now," he said. "There will be no stopping until we become a net exporter in energy."
If confirmed as recoverable resources, the reserves could ease the country's dependence on costly energy imports and could ease the financial market jitters.
The news came after Erdoğan announced "good news" for the country that he had promised earlier this week.
The Turkish drilling ship, Fatih, had been carrying out exploration operations in the Tuna-1 sector in the western Black Sea for the past month. The sector is near where Romania has also found gas reserves.
Fatih's 103-meter-long (338 feet) tower was disassembled in Istanbul's Haydarpaşa port to enable the safe passage of the vessel under the bridges spanning the Bosphorus Strait before its journey north to the Black Sea.
The vessel set sail for the Black Sea on May 29 from Istanbul to the Port of Trabzon in Turkey's northeast, where it reached its destination for reassembly on June 6.
