December 13 (SeeNews) - Swiss-based Manas Petroleum said on Thursday it received a final approval by Albania’s government on two production sharing agreements for the exploration of four onshore oilfields in Albania.
The agreements comprise blocks A, B, D, E, which cover approximately 4,000 square kilometres, Manas Petroleum said in a statement posted on its website.
The agreements were signed in August through Manas's wholly-owned subsidiary DWM Petroleum.
The four blocks, in the north, hold a large deep under-thrust structure with a potential to hold a total of more than 820 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) of light oil and natural gas, according to studies by international energy group Shell and French exploration and production firm Coparex, which explored the blocks in the 1990s, Manas said.
Manas plans to reprocess approximately 700 kilometres of the existing data as well as acquire new seismic data, it said.
The blocks are located north of shallow high-sulphur heavy oil production with an estimated 2.7 billion barrels of oil in place and cumulative production of 350 million barrels.