TDI-Brooks wraps up third geotechnical campaign at major Turkish gas project

TDI-Brooks has completed the third geotechnical support project for Phase 2 of the pipeline route investigation and site survey campaign at the Sakarya gas field offshore Türkiye.

The program consisted of gravity cone penetrometer (gCPT) and T-Bar tests. During this second leg of phase two, 78 gCPTs were collected in up to 2,168 meters of water, as well as 60 T-Bars in Box Cores acquired by DenAr Ocean Engineering.

During the first program in April 2021, TDI-Brooks acquired approximately 30 gCPTs with its memory standard 15 cm² CPT cones, which were fitted onto DenAr’s Piston Core (PC) rigs. On box cores, the company provided its Cyclic T-Bar’s using the Box Cores.

This project was conducted on board the DENAR 2 vessel over a period of 71 days in the Turkish part of the Black Sea.

For the second program, carried out this July, TDI-Brooks mobilized its research vessel PROTEUS for heavy geotechnical coring/CPT acquisition.

This geotechnical program acquired several dozen 20-meter Jumbo Piston Cores (JPCs), 40-meter CPT-Stingers and up to 40-m SB Shelby-tube Stinger-Samplers.

The Sakarya gas field development is said to be one of the largest energy projects ever built in Türkiye.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced in August 2020 that significant gas resources had been found in the Tuna-1 well in the Sakarya field.

The scale of the reserves is believed to have the capacity to help the country cut its dependence on energy imports if the gas can be commercially extracted and potentially meet the country’s energy needs for 20 years.

Turkish national oil and gas company TPAO revealed in mid-June that the pipelaying for the gas field development had started.

The project is expected to achieve first gas in the first quarter of 2023.