Turkey is in talks with Canada’s Candu Energy and other companies on plans to build its second and third nuclear power plants, Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said.

Speaking to reporters the day before yesterday, Monday, during a visit to southeastern Turkey, Bayraktar said Turkey wants “to put a name” this year on the programs for the additional stations it is planning.

“Russia, South Korea and China are interested in the second and third nuclear power plant. But in addition to them, there are also other countries and companies with whom we are negotiating,” he said. “One of them is, for example, Canada. The Candu company,” he added.

Candu did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear power company, is building Turkey’s first nuclear power plant at Akuyu, in Mersin province on the Mediterranean coast, as part of a $20 billion deal struck in 2010.

Turkey plans to build a second nuclear power plant in the Black Sea province of Sinope and a third nuclear power plant in the northwestern region of Eastern Thrace.

“Estimates of 6 billion barrels of oil reserves in southeastern Turkey”

US oil company Continental Resources estimates that there is a deposit of 6.1 billion barrels of oil in the Diyarbakir Basin in southeastern Turkey, the Turkish energy minister further said.

Continental Resources and Turkish national oil company TPAO signed a joint venture agreement in March to drill for oil in that basin.

“Current annual Turkish (crude) oil imports are 365 million barrels. So 6.1 billion barrels of the field is a wonderful number,” Alparslan Bayraktar pointed out.

The minister had previously said the March deal opens “a new era in local oil exploration” with Turkey seeing the discovery of oil and gas deposits as a key development. It aims to produce gas in the northwestern region of eastern Thrace, Bayraktar said.

Continental Resources did not immediately respond to a request for comment.