The End Of The Century-Old Black Sea Drilling Dream

There is a long history of drilling for hydrocarbons in the Black Sea. After all, oil-rich Azerbaijan, and the Caspian region in general, was one of the first spots in the world to see mass-scale crude production. Yet one drilling campaign after another has brought poor results to the nations bordering the Black Sea: Turkey has failed to find any commercially viable deepwater field for more than 50 years (until its dubious 2020 discovery of a giant field), Russia has seemingly abandoned its Black Sea ambitions on the back of non-commercial discoveries,…