Exploiting domestic fossil fuel reserves has been billed by Ankara as a key step in securing a more stable economic future, but chronic Turkish import dependence is unlikely to change in the coming decade even if a new agreement between oil giant Shell and the country’s state oil firm strikes it big in the Black Sea.

On Thursday, the state owned Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) signed a deal with Shell on for an estimated $200 million drilling contract which will last three years, a move that will make Shell the third major international oil firm to try its hand at finding extractable reserves in Turkey’s Black Sea waters. Ankara’s frustrated search for oil in the region has continued for years, with government promises of tens of billions of barrels of oil offered as a way out of Turkey’s biggest economic weakness -- its need to import around 90 percent of its oil from abroad. “But now and in the future it will be difficult to know how close Turkey or private companies are to discovering oil in the region, and even more difficult to say what kind of reserves it might discover there,” oil analyst and Turkish Association for Energy Economics (TRAEE) President Gürkan Kumbaroğlu told Sunday’s Zaman.

“Similar exploration has been going on for years, and there’s only one clear result -- there is probably no easy oil or gas in the Black Sea.” Source; Today's Zaman