In the Kurdish province of Şirnak (Şirnex), an engineer was killed by a fallen drilling rig. The accident occurred on Sunday in an oil field in the Gabar massif, operated by the state-owned oil company Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO). Two other workers who were buried under the rubble of the drilling rig were rescued by the disaster control team and taken to hospital. It was initially unclear whether their lives were in danger. How the serious accident could have happened is now the subject of criminal investigations, reports said.

Şirnak Bar Association made a written statement regarding the collapse of the drilling rig in the oil exploration field of Turkish Petroleum Joint Stock Company in the Gabar Mountain region.

"The works carried out with the target of 100 thousand barrels of oil per day are destroying the ecological life in the region, and the workers participating in these works are disregarding occupational health and safety with the aim of superhuman work. We have been informed that the lives of the workers are being endangered. Over the years, various holdings and companies have made 'investment in the region' Under the guise of 'doing', they have turned the living spaces of the Şirnak region into a source of profit for themselves. The damage caused to the region by the ecological destruction caused by the works that turned the Cudi and Gabar fields into debris fields will restrict the living spaces in the region in the future, destroy the habitat of the region and drag us into an environment where we cannot breathe.”

In Şirnak, which is located in the south-eastern corner of Turkey and only a few kilometers from the border with Iraq, there are very large reserves of oil, especially in Gabar and Cûdî.

A new oil field discovered under the Gabar River last spring at a depth of 2,600 meters, with a capacity of about 100,000 barrels per day, is five times larger than the reserves of the largest field in the country, also known as the Gabar Field. Its potential was estimated at one billion barrels in 2023 and the value of its reserves at around $70 billion.

The quality of oil in Şirnak is comparable to that of Arab oil, which is the most expensive in the world and has minimal impurities. The exploitation of oil and other raw materials in the region is one reason for the extreme militarization of Şirnak and other Kurdish provinces.