FILYOS — A siren sounded, a mufti said a prayer, and Osman Gazi, a gas-processing platform 298.5 meters long, left Filyos Port on Saturday carrying Turkey’s bet that its own Black Sea gas can reach twice as many homes, the Energy Ministry said.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking by video to the ceremony, called it “the first factory of the Blue Homeland.” The platform will process gas from wells in the Sakarya Gas Field and send it back to Filyos through subsea pipelines, according to Anadolu Agency’s account. TEH reported in 2023 that Erdogan lit a torch at the same port to inaugurate the first gas pumping from the Black Sea, promising 40 million cubic meters a day once new wells opened.
Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar told the ceremony that the field’s first phase, 12 wells, reached 9.5 million cubic meters a day and has produced 7.23 billion cubic meters so far. Ten more wells and the platform, he said, lift capacity to 20 million cubic meters a day by 2027. Those are the ministry’s own numbers, and neither its release nor Anadolu’s report offers an outside estimate.
The timetable is the harder part. The Energy Ministry said in August 2025 that Osman Gazi “will begin operations in mid-2026.” On Saturday the platform was only leaving port, and Bayraktar’s goal was to light the Sakarya field’s flame in its flare tower in December. Nothing in the ministry’s release or Anadolu’s account says what moved the date.
Anadolu Agency reported that Erdogan said one in three households will use domestic gas from 2027. It also reported that the platform is expected to add $3.5 billion a year to the economy, a figure given in a passage citing the Communications Directorate, with no explanation of how it was calculated.
Black Sea gas is one of several supply bets. In June, TEH reported that BOTAS signed a 15-year Azerbaijani gas deal for Absheron field supply, with deliveries starting in 2029.
A second platform, now under construction, is meant to lift Black Sea output to 45 million cubic meters a day from 32 wells in 2028, Bayraktar said in the ministry’s release. The ministry’s August 2025 target for the Sakarya field with that platform was 40 million. Neither document says whether the two figures describe the same thing.
