Turkey Beating Norway as Biggest Regional Oil Driller

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 leapfroggedNorway 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 neighboring Israel and Cyprus made some of the decade’s biggest gas finds in the past three years.

Turkey imported about 92 percent of the oil it consumed in 2011 and 98 percent of the natural gas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The scale of Turkey’s energy imports is swelling the current account deficit, fueling inflation and threatening to restrain economic growth.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-10/turkey-beating-norway-as-biggest-regional-oil-driller-energy.html