ANKARA
Greece was “uneasy” after Türkiye sent its new drill ship to the Eastern Mediterranean for hydrocarbon exploration, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday.
“We sent our Abdulhamid Han drill ship from Mersin Tasucu port, but Greece was very uneasy and asked ‘What does Erdogan do?’.”
“Erdogan is doing nothing, Erdogan is doing his duty,” Erdogan said in the capital Ankara at a mass opening ceremony of 34 hydroelectric power plants.
Türkiye on Tuesday sent its fourth drill ship Abdulhamid Han from the Tasucu port in the country’s southern Mersin province to the Eastern Mediterranean for hydrocarbon exploration.
Erdogan added that Türkiye is strong with its four drilling ships and two seismic research vessels.
As part of Türkiye’s strategy for hydrocarbon exploration, Abdulhamid Han has recently arrived at its first destination, the Yorukler-1 well offshore in the southern province of Antalya.
The ship, dubbed the strongest of the country’s current fleet of four, will drill exploration wells in the Eastern Mediterranean while other ships, Yavuz and Kanuni, will continue drilling operations in the Black Sea.
Erdogan also said: “… from the moment we extract the natural gas, you will see how the weather changes in the whole region.”
The new addition to the fleet is a seventh-generation vessel and one of five worldwide with the capability of drilling to depths of up to 12,200 meters (40,026 feet).
‘Yusufeli dam almost completed’
About the Yusufeli dam in Türkiye’s northeastern Artvin province, Erdogan said it is nearly completed.
“Our highest dam, ‘Yusufeli,’ which will boost Türkiye’s annual electricity production capacity by nearly 1.9 billion kilowatt-hours, is almost completed,” he said.
Erdogan said the most important opportunity of Türkiye in domestic and renewable energy production is water resources and the structure of the country’s geography has advantages in this regard.
He added that Türkiye has now 605 new hydroelectric power plants, saying: “We no longer suffer from drought, even during the driest seasons, thanks to the fact that we have raised our country’s overall water storage capacity to over 180 billion cubic meters.”
