TURKEY - The Other Operators.

Other firms in Turkey have included Texaco and Unocal (now both part of Chevron), Canada's Asamera and Denison Mines. Unocal joined TPAO in exploring for geothermal energy in eastern Turkey, where the state firm has 30% in a venture estimated in 2005 at $300m.

TPAO has been trying to start exploring for oil and gas along Turkey's Mediterranean coast. But it has been constrained by complex territorial disputes over the Aegean Sea and islands between Turkey and Greece.

BP in 2000 began drilling on a Mediterranean block off Mersin and Hatay, the latter having been the subject of a territorial claim by Syria. BP's Amoco, holding the block with TPAO since the early 1990s, did seismic work in the area in 1998. Under a JV deal signed on July 19, 2000, TPAO and El Paso of the US began in the following month seismic work for the Iskenderun and Mersin bays, in the East Mediterranean.