AA, Ankara: Turkey lit the first gas flare in the Sakarya Gas Field located in the Black Sea during a ceremony Wednesday.

"Today, for the first time, we will burn off the Black Sea gas that we discovered and started to extract from hundreds of meters underground," said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, addressing a virtual ceremony to mark the occasion.

"With the introduction of Black Sea gas in the near future, we will significantly reduce our dependence on foreign sources," Erdogan said.

The wells Turkey drilled for natural gas in the Black Sea are not the first, and of course, they will not be the last, he added.

"Previously, we used to carry out drillings with international companies via leasing. Now, unlike the previous ones, we also carry out this work with our own ships and our own human resources," he went on to say.

Turkey also ended its foreign dependency with the technical competence it achieved in the matter of drilling, he said.

Turkey’s largest gas find, totaling 405 billion cubic meters (bcm), was discovered last year by the country’s drillship Fatih in the Sakarya Gas Field located in the Black Sea.

Last month, Turkey announced a second discovery of 135 bcm in the Amasra-1 well in the northern Sakarya Gas Field, bringing the cumulative gas discovery total to 540 bcm.

Last year, the country’s gas consumption totaled 48.2 bcm, up by around 6.5% compared to the previous year. Turkey imported 48 bcm of its gas consumption, while domestic production reached 441 million cubic meters in 2020.

First production from the Sakarya field plans to start by 2023.