Energy seeking Turkey overtakes Europe on number of wells

Turkey is drilling for oil and natural gas with more rigs than any European country and plans new rules in 2013 to speed exploration of energy supplies for the fastest-growing major economy after China. The country fielded 26 rigs at Dec. 31, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, and the number has since risen to 34, Energy Ministry officials said yesterday. Turkey has leapfrogged Norway as offshore drilling increased in the Black and Mediterranean seas. Spending on exploration jumped to $610 million last year from $42 million a decade earlier.With economic growth forecast at 3.5 percent this year and about twice the pace of the most advanced economies to 2017, Turkey is drilling for its own energy to ease reliance on imports from Iran, Iraq and Russia. State-owned Turkish Petroleum Corp. has taken Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) and Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) as partners, after neighbouring Israel and Cyprus made some of the decade's biggest gas finds in the past three years. "If there's one country that needs energy, it's Turkey," said Darren Engels, an analyst at FirstEnergy Capital in Calgary. "Their domestic business doesn't scratch the surface." Turkish Petroleum, which is known as TPAO and has operations in Libya, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Colombia and Kazakhstan, needs to boost domestic output as it pursues a target of supplying all of Turkey's energy needs by 2023. Turkey had proved reserves of 307 million barrels of oil and gas in 2010, 88 percent of which is oil, according to FirstEnergy's Engels. In 2011 alone, the country consumed about 258 million barrels, according to the EIA.