Turkey is preparing to send its first floating gas production platform to the Black Sea, with the deployment scheduled for Saturday. The unit will be the country's first floating facility dedicated to offshore gas production. Once in place, it is expected to roughly double output from Turkey's largest domestic gas field.
The asset at the centre of the move is the country's largest domestic gas producer, so a near-doubling of its output would translate into a meaningful rise in national production. The announcement stops short of figures, however: it gives no current production rate, no target level and no date for when the higher output is expected.
Floating production platforms are generally used where a fixed, bottom-founded structure is impractical, whether because of water depth, seabed conditions or the scale of the reserves. A floating unit sits over subsea wells, carries processing equipment on deck and exports treated gas, typically by pipeline to shore, allowing a field to produce without fixed infrastructure being built in place. The concept is established in other offshore basins, but this will be the first time Turkey has applied it to gas production in the Black Sea.
For operators, the deployment illustrates the role floating production can play in lifting output at a producing field without building new fixed infrastructure. Because the field is already the country's largest domestic producer, the expected doubling would add noticeably to Turkey's domestically produced gas volumes, although the announcement does not quantify them. The unit also gives the industry a first Turkish reference point for floating gas production in the Black Sea.
Source: Offshore Engineer
