Socar Hired for Drilling at Turkish UGS Site
Azeri state-owned Socar’s drilling unit has won a contract worth $100mn for 40 wells at the Botas-operated Tuz Golu underground gas storage facility in Turkey, in order to expand its capacity.
Socar AQS said on October 18 it had been awarded the contract by a joint venture between China CAMC Engineering and Turkey’s IC Ictas Construction Industries and Trade, which in turn were hired by Botas in March to expand Tuz Golu’s capacity to 5.4bn m3 by 2023. At present the site in Turkey’s central Aksaray province can only store 600mn m3.
The cost of the expansion is estimated at $2.5bn, much of which has been covered with funding from development banks. Turkey's importance as a transit country is growing as the Southern Gas Corridor ramps up, meaning that the cross-country delivery of Azerbaijan's gas is at greater risk of interruption unless such measures are taken.