Turkish and Somali officials announced that a Turkish drilling vessel docked at the port of Mogadishu on Friday ahead of the launch of the first-ever oil drilling operations off the coast of Somalia, a country long devastated by decades of conflict.
Türkiye’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar, who arrived in Mogadishu on Friday, attended a ceremony held at the port together with Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to mark the arrival of the vessel, which will be the first Turkish ship to conduct drilling operations outside Turkish waters.
“The seismic surveys carried out by the Oruç Reis enabled the identification of a highly promising geological structure. We named this well ‘Curad’, which means ‘first-born baby’ in Somali,” the Turkish minister said, noting that the well is located approximately 370 kilometres off the coast of Mogadishu.
Bayraktar stated: “The depth at this location is three thousand five hundred metres, and we plan to drill four thousand metres below the seabed, bringing the total depth to seven thousand five hundred metres. This will make it the world’s second deepest drilling project.”