Last week, Deputy Energy and Natural Resources Minister A.Bayraktar discussed energy cooperation between Turkey and the U.S. with executives from prominent American energy companies at an event held by the Investment Office and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce at the Turkish Embassy in Washington.
Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce's U.S.-Turkey Business Council Jennifer Miel said:
- We expect American companies to play a critical role in securing Turkey’s energy future through investment projects and as a supporter of domestic firms.
- There is a strong dialogue between the U.S. energy industry and the Turkish authorities on new projects related to LNG, renewable energy sources, technologies and recent discoveries in the region
A report last month claimed Turkey has shared data on its Black Sea hydrocarbon discoveries with U.S. energy majors, including Chevron and Exxon Mobil, ahead of possible cooperation extracting the gas.
Ankara has so far insisted it would develop the 540 billion m3 (bcm) of natural gas it discovered in the Black Sea region’s Sakarya field on its own and has been cool to foreign corporate interest.
Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez late last month stressed that sharing technical information about the site where the discovery was made is out of the question.
He recalled earlier signals there could be cooperation both in the engineering and consulting segments of the work, as well as in the supply of materials and construction stages.
Turkey-U.S. trade volume reached about $21 billion in 2019.
The bilateral exchange of goods exceeded $20 billion in 2020 despite the coronavirus pandemic.
