Speaking at the summit, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar said, "As Turkey, we have a very important strategic move, and that is the Diversification Strategy. Turkey turned to its own domestic renewable resources in order to solve its foreign dependency in energy, while also following very important diversification strategies. Today, while Turkey supplies natural gas through pipelines, it also tried to benefit from the energy abundance, especially from North America, with a strong gasification infrastructure. After 2016, our gasification capacity has increased 5 times. That is why More energy has started to come to Türkiye. We made this diversification in order not to be affected by a disruption in pipeline gas. One of the most important ones is the TurkStream pipeline. Think about it, for a long time, our natural gas was coming to the Thrace region, including Istanbul, through Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria. Now, with the TurkStream pipeline, we started to receive our natural gas directly in 2022. "And in the process leading up to today, there would most likely not be any flow from that pipeline to Türkiye and Turkey could have experienced a serious problem in natural gas. But with these diversification steps we have taken, Turkey has not experienced any problems despite the great oil and supply crisis since February," he said.
Minister Bayraktar said, "There are targets set by our President regarding energy. For example, one of the most important things we have done since 2002 was to bring natural gas to households in Türkiye. Look, we are reaching the thousandth settlement these days. All 81 provinces have natural gas today. This is a very important target. This is one of our targets in a country like Turkey, which has a large geography and a difficult geography. Therefore, Türkiye needs more natural gas. Türkiye's economy is growing, its population is growing." Our needs are increasing, urbanization continues, our demand for electricity continues. Therefore, we need to establish supply security there and meet the increasing demand. At the COP 31 Summit in Antalya, our President announced to the world that 'Turkey will be a carbon-neutral economy'. There is less than 30 years left. Because being a carbon-neutral economy means that everything we know will change. Therefore, while struggling with these difficulties, Turkey needs to search for its own oil and natural gas. It needs to search for its own renewable energy. Türkiye must have nuclear energy at the highest level. In order to get out of this equation, we must put these tools into action. This is what lies behind the story of Türkiye's oil and natural gas exploration. What did we do differently? geldi. Çok güçlü bir filomuz var. Onun için işte şimdi Lübnan'a gidiyoruz. Somali'de şu anda fiili aramamız var. Libya'da çalışmalarımız devam ediyor. Ama kendi denizlerimizde de, Karadeniz'de 2020 yılında bulduğumuz doğalgazı da en hızlı şekilde üretimle arttırmakla ilgili çalışıyoruz. Daha önce gidilmemiş farklı vesilelerle coğrafyalar, işte Gabar'da bugün petrol üretiyoruz. 85 bin varillere geldik. Şöyle 100 bin varilin üzerine çıkacağız. Hedefimiz That is in 2027. Therefore, our own production is of great value. But our question here is that the need is very high in the short term. That is why we say, 'Our production has doubled in the last 5 years.' But the need is so great, we need to do different things now. he said.
Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said, "We, Turkish Petroleum, are a strong, well-established company in Türkiye, producing 300 thousand barrels of oil and gas as of today. But the target is to reach 1 million barrels a day. Therefore, what we have found here is good and by the way, we will go to 550-600 thousand barrels in 2028. We see this in the production line, but in order to reach 1 million barrels, as we mentioned, in Iraq, Syria, In Libya, in Pakistan. Now, our Oruç Reis Ris seismic ship will work in the fields there. We have signed cooperation agreements with international oil and natural gas companies as of 2026. Hopefully, there may be new news and good news before the end of the year. We are making partnerships, we will continue to do so. There may be new fields, there may be new countries, so we can reach the target of 1 million barrels. "We aim to increase national production, not only domestic production, but also production outside Türkiye, which we can call national production, by taking the power of our country behind us," he said.
Minister Bayraktar said, "Turkey has become a country that exports natural gas. Okay, our own production is also increasing. For example, the offers coming to us from Europe now are that we should buy Turkish gas. As you know, the European Union does not want to buy Russian gas. The decision has now been made regarding this. Russian gas will not be purchased through pipelines as of October 30, 2027. Russian LNG will not be purchased as of January 1, 2027. Now, in such an environment, Turkey can create an important alternative. In this sense, we are an energy center with the investments we have made." We are on the way to becoming Türkiye's national energy 2040 vision. We will hopefully launch the mining side of our new national energy and mining policy in 2027. But at the moment, the energy will not only be focused on electricity, there will be oil and natural gas, we will announce the National Energy 2040, which I just mentioned, hopefully on November 5, in Dolmabahçe. The date of 2040, especially 2053, is now 2027 as we move towards a carbon neutral economy. "What we will do in these 13 years will actually take us to 2053. I hope we will announce a study that will reveal how Türkiye will reach this goal. We have worked very comprehensively, but let me say one thing about it: The essence of the matter will be electrification," he said.
Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar said, "I can say this for the Akkuyu power plant: We have come to the end of the work. An intensive testing process is currently going on. We are currently in the testing phase, hopefully in the next few weeks, we are targeting the physical start-up of Akkuyu. By loading the nuclear fuel and hopefully, we will use Akkuyu's electricity in our system starting from 2027. We will determine the most suitable project technology for Türkiye within this period and install these power plants." "We propose to the world what we want to do in Türkiye regarding electrification, and we can talk about the 35 percent electrification target in 2035 as the most important outcome of COP31 if an agreement is reached," he said.
Minister Bayraktar said, "Turkey definitely has to switch to electric transportation to a certain extent. It will be a process in which we will see more electric vehicles on Türkiye's roads, hopefully more TOGG, our own brands. These things we are talking about are perhaps not in the energy sector's own hands, because these are actually things brought about by the conflict environment in the world. In this sense, we are heading towards a process that will challenge the prices of both natural gas and oil in the upcoming period."
The Minister said, "The new energy architecture of Türkiye's National Energy 2040 is a process in which electrification is at the center. We will reveal Türkiye's increasing energy demand on the one hand. It will be a launch in which we meet the energy demand and reduce its foreign dependency, announce its goals on the path towards energy independence, and announce Türkiye's climate-related targets to the world before COP 31. We hope to see you all."
