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Turkey’s First FPSO Arrives in the Black Sea

Turkey's first FPSO
Turkey's first FPSO arriving (Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources)

Published Jun 2, 2025 1:14 PM by The Maritime Executive

 

Turkey’s first floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel, Osman Gazi, arrived in the Black Sea over the weekend, where its 20-year contract for gas production is expected to start next year. The FPSO will help double the gas output from Turkey’s deepwater Sakarya gas field, which is currently producing 9 million cubic meters(mcm) of gas daily. 

Osman Gazi’s maximum natural gas processing capacity is 10.5 mcm and has a transfer capacity of 10 mcm. With the installation of the vessel, the Sakarya gas field will reach a daily production of 20 mcm, which will help meet the natural gas needs of 8 million households in Turkey, according to Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar.

In the past few years, Turkey has intensified efforts to expand natural gas production in the Black Sea. The country, which imports over 90 percent of its energy needs, wants to cut the import bill by developing domestic resources.

 

 

It is part of these plans that in 2023 the state energy firm TPAO acquired the FPSO from the floater specialist BW Offshore. The platform arrived in Turkey last year in September onboard Boka Vanguard, a semi-submersible heavy transport vessel owned by Boskalis. The platform has been undergoing technical preparations at a shipyard in Çanakkale city. It was floated out on May 27 and docked at the Port of Filyos in the Black Sea on Saturday. 

The FPSO is 298.5 meters long, 56 meters wide, and has a personnel capacity of 140 people. The natural gas processed on the platform will be delivered on land via a 161-kilometer-long transmission line. It will then be fed to the national grid in a ready-to-use form.

The FPSO adds to the growing list of vessels that Turkey has acquired recently to boost its energy security. Turkey launched its first drillship, Fatih, in 2017, followed by Yavuz in 2018, Kanuni in 2020 and Abdülhamid Han in 2021. Fatih helped in the discovery of the Sakarya gas field in August 2020. 

Last month, Turkey announced the discovery of a new reserve of 75 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas in the Black Sea. The reserve was discovered during drilling in the Goktepe-3 well, at a depth of 3,500 meters.