Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan addressed on Tuesday a ceremony held to see Türkiye’s fourth drillship, the Abdulhamid Han, off to its first mission from Mersin Taşucu Port.

Erdoğan said: “While setting our country’s goals for 2023, we saw that foreign dependency in energy was the primary issue that should be addressed. We decided to manage this process with our own labor force, our own database and our own technological means in a bid to eliminate the desperation caused by the wells that had first been opened and then covered with concrete for years. Now we are in. We, too, are in this field with our four drillships and two seismic research ships. We have an offshore drilling fleet that is rare in the world.”

“The Abdulhamid han symbolizes Türkiye’s new vision in energy”

Noting that the Abdulhamid Han symbolizes Türkiye’s new vision in energy, Erdoğan said: “We have entered a new period in which we run by ourselves the processes of seismic exploration, drilling and introducing the newly discovered resources into economy which in the past we couldn’t get done even with our own money.”

Offering his gratitude to anyone who contributed to Türkiye becoming one of the leading countries in the drilling of oil and natural gas, Erdoğan noted that it had not been easy for Türkiye to reach its current point in drilling, and said: “We have long been stalled with either malicious plots or well-intentioned but cowardly choices sometimes, and with overt treasons at other times. We have lost time and resources. While setting our country’s goals for 2023, we saw that foreign dependency in energy was the primary issue that should be addressed.”

Erdoğan continued his remarks as follows: “We decided to manage this process with our own labor force, our own database and our own technological means in a bid to eliminate the desperation caused by the wells that had first been opened and then covered with concrete for years.  Now we are in. We, too, are in this field with our four drillships and two seismic research ships. We have an offshore drilling fleet that is rare in the world. After completing the necessary preparations, we have started the drilling works in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. We had sent our drillship, the Fatih, off to its mission by saying, ‘Not everyone who seeks can find it but those who find it are the one who seek,’ and after a short while we broke the good news. The 540 billion cubic meters of natural gas found in the Black Sea marked a milestone and boosted the morale of our nation beyond its material value.” (ILKHA)