Explorations
Digging for Energy in Distant Lands
Dispatch 3: Knowledge to Burn
Modern bus station in TurkeyPhoto by Suzan Erem
ANKARA—Gray dust swirls along the roadsides, behind colorfully painted trucks, and in front of the white city buses that stop suddenly and sporadically on the blacktopped streets of Turkey's capital. Cars swerve without signaling across lanes with no markings. Taxis that cut us off are met with a string of Turkish xpletives and mutterings. I hold on tight as I feel my feet pressing against invisible pedals on the passengerside floor.
My cousin Gultan is driving me to the Turkish Petroleum Corporation where I will meet Penn State student Esra Eren and her colleagues. Gultan is a tall woman with a tomboyish swagger. She was born and raised in Ankara, but over the loud fan of the car's air conditioner, she confesses she has never heard of the Turkish Petroleum Corporation.
Gultan lives near the embassies. She doesn't know this side of the ancient settlement, a capital city going as far back as the Hittites in 500 B.C. and known subsequently as Angora (as in the cat) and Ankira. But she came here yesterday to pick me up at the otogar, the new three-level bus station that would accommodate more than a hundred modern intercity buses at once. With its control tower and gates it looks more like Kennedy Airport than any Greyhound station I've ever seen.
Turkish Petroleum Corporation in AnkaraPhoto by Suzan Erem
My cousin maneuvers around traffic circles, squinting at road signs. Then she spots a tall building with Turkiye Petrolleri Anonim Ortakligi (Turkish Petroleum Corporation) printed in large red block letters across the top. We pull up to a security kiosk and gain permission to enter. Eren meets us and takes me into the research facility. As we walk down the hallway, I see several large, framed posters explaining recent research on petroleum extraction in Turkish oil fields. I am surprised that the posters are written in English.
"These are posters from international conferences," Eren explains, leading me into lab. Her director is on vacation, so I will meet with the acting director, a woman named Ayshe Yildirim. Eren is a little nervous about my presence and she is unsure whether I will be permitted to take pictures in light of the general fear of security breaches. But she still sports her characteristic ear-to-ear smile, because this morning she received her samples. It was not a dramatic event, but one more fitting a government agency. They came hand-delivered in simple parcel post boxes—three short, clear glass jars with screw-top white lids, each containing a lump of coal-like rock, and six small test tubes of oil. The oil, which looks like Coca Cola, now sits in the lab refrigerator. With these samples, she will be able to continue her graduate work at Penn State. Turkish Petroleum has given Eren a two-year scholarship for her research, and the expectation is that she will be able to help them understand how to extract and Turkey's energy resources from the ground more cost-effectively.
Esra Eren in the labs at the Turkish Petroleum CorporationPhoto by Suzan Erem
Ayshe Yildirim joins us in the small office she shares with another of Eren's future colleagues, Selda, to talk to us about Eren's work. She's a blonde woman in her mid-forties who flashes a quick smile then leans forward across her desk to talk. I ask her if it will be okay for us to speak in English, and she obliges.
"Esra will be part of the team that analyzes petroleum to derive new uses and find new sources," Yildirim explains. "She will correlate source rock and petroleum, helping us discover what came from which rock. That way if we find the rock but no oil, we can go to the oil well, study the rocks there and consider extracting the oil from it." Source rock, if heated enough, generates oil or gas.
The Turkish Petroleum Corporation, Yildirim says, was created in 1954 as the government body that explores for, drills for, and analyzes hydrocarbons—oil and natural gas. Though in recent years it has partnered with private companies such as BP to drill in the Black Sea, it still accounts for only 12 percent of the entire energy production of Turkey, which, like the U.S., purchases a large majority of its energy supply from other countries. The search for new oil sources continues, with ongoing research into extraction, and with support for students like Eren.
What does Turkish Petroleum hope to get for its investment in Eren? Yildirim smiles. "We want her to see other places— to see the research in other places, to develop herself," she says slowly, "and to come back to Turkey and produce something for Turkey." Yildirim nods in the direction of the hall. "When Esra comes back, she will work in the lab to analyze oil and give us new technical knowledge."
Eren and her research samples of coal-like rock and vials of thick black oil Photo by Suzan Erem
The labs across the hall from us contain the instruments used for such analysis, like a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer , which can analyze liquids, gases and solids. In another lab, long thin tubes of tiny blue gravel—magnesium, Eren explains—are working as filters to remove water from samples. Eren will learn how to work with this equipment and more as she completes her research at Penn State.
"In Turkish Petroleum we don't have enough equipment, we have only basic ones," she explains, adding that the company anticipates purchasing more high-tech equipment soon. At Penn State, Eren will learn to use the more expensive and specialized equipment to better understand the molecular composition of asphaltite.
"Oil or coal contains huge molecules and the structures are very complex," she explains. "We can define some, but some parts we still don't know. In analysis there's some percentage called 'other' and we don't know what's in it. I have to find that part."
Understanding the molecular structure of asphaltite could help the research team at Turkish Petroleum find ways to extract high energy compounds from the mineral and provide Turkey with a new liquid fuel.
Eren is excited to get started on the most engaging segment of her studies. At the moment, however, she is more concerned about her next step. How, with strict post-September 11 airport security and intense scrutiny of anyone from the Middle East, will she get her samples into the U.S.?