Ankara’s Black Sea Natural gas is no solution Erdogan troubles

Ankara’s Black Sea gas discovery announcement on some 320 billion cubic metres of natural gas reserves was rushed and holds no scientific value at this phase, the former head of Turkey's national oil company Turkish Petroleum (TPAO) and petroleum engineer Pamir Necdet Pamir told Sözcü newspaper on Sunday.

While the reserves are certainly good news for the country, Pamir told Sözcü columnist Aytunç Erkin, it is not in Turkey’s benefit to release non-scientific statements based on insufficient data on the discovery in the preliminary phase of drilling in a single well.

The discovery would place Turkey in 32nd position in a ranking of countries for natural gas reserves should they be proven as economical to extract. Russia leads with 50 trillion cubic metres of proven reserves, Iran is second with 34 trillion cubic metres and Qatar third with 23.8 trillion cubic metres, Karaalioğlu said, citing data from OPEC.

Karaalioğlu was the Ankara bureau chief and general news coordinator of the pro-government Yeni Şafak newspaper in the early years of the Erdoğan government, which came to power in 2002. In 2007, he became head of news at the Star newspaper, which was also close to the government, and joined NTV news channel in 2014.

The Turkish lira slid to a record low of 7.408 per dollar early last week on concern that the central bank’s depleted foreign exchange reserves, a lending boom by state-run banks and a widening current account deficit was threatening to destablise the economy.

The lira fell 0.5 percent to 7.37 per dollar on Monday.

“Turkey’s economic difficulties continue,” Karaalioğlu said, citing low manufacturing production levels, lack of technology, an insufficiently qualified workforce and other structural issues.

“Natural gas and petrol are no solution to this,” he said.