Tajikistan Oil Exploration License Granted To Manas Petroleum
Baar, Switzerland - Manas Petroleum Corp., Somon Oil, a 90% owned subsidiary of Manas' 100% owned subsidiary DWM Petroleum AG, has been awarded an exploration license by the Tajikistan government. The license contains a number of prospects and leads determined by Soviet seismic acquisition in the 1970s and 1980s. The license is located in the Fergana Basin, Central Asia, where the United States Geological Survey estimates 3 billion barrels of recoverable oil is contained in the area's under-thrust structures.
The Manas Tajikistan license is located adjacent to the northern boundary of Manas petroleum's Tuzluk, Kyrgyzstan license, which is currently part of a $54M farm out. According to the analysis of UK-based petroleum engineers Scott Pickford ltd., of 10 known structures on Manas Petroleum's Kyrgyz Fergana Basin licenses, the "most likely" STOIIP estimate is 1.2 billion barrels of light oil. The company currently has a MOU with a major oil company regarding the farm-out of an interest in the entire Manas/Tajikistan license, and though no guarantee can be made regarding the outcome, discussions continue to advance regarding the details of a final binding agreement.
The addition of the Tajikistan license is a significant step forward in the company's strategy of building a major portfolio of under-thrust light oil prospects that have the potential to become large oil fields. Manas now has licenses covering more than 11,000 square kilometers in what the company considers are among the most prospective parts of the Fergana Basin.
The executive of Manas Petroleum would like to point out that while no guarantee can be made as to the outcome of its efforts to acquire and farm-out other large concessions, Manas Petroleum is continuing to aggressively work towards the acquisition of high impact exploration assets in areas including Central Asia, East Asia, Balkans and North West Caspian.
Manas Petroleum Ltd. is a Baar, Switzerland oil and gas exploration company. The company's focus is the exploration and development of large under-thrust light oil prospects in areas where, though they often have shallow production, their deeper potential has yet to be evaluated. Manas is also currently in the advanced stages of finalizing a Production Sharing Agreement covering four exploration blocks in Albania. According to preliminary estimates by the previous block holders, Shell and Corporex, these four blocks hold a large deep under-thrust structure with a potential to hold a total of more than 800 million BOE of light oil and natural gas. Numerous oil seeps have been located where the reservoir rock outcrops along a significant portion of the eastern side of the Manas's blocks. Further refinement of the Shell/Corporex data set by Manas Petroleum has outlined a series of large prospects within the blocks.
Over 350 million barrels of oil have been produced from shallow oil fields which begin 100 Km to the south of the Manas blocks in the Manas's blocks. It is important to note that Shell and Corporex worked independently of one another in their initial discovery of the overall under-thrust structure and thus did not benefit from each other's seismic acquisition or understanding of the area's geology. Manas Petroleum is combining the two companies' $25M data set for the first time. By combining the two data sets Manas Petroleum will further refine the Shell/Corporex models while greatly increasing the accuracy of the original Shell/Corporex estimates. Following the company's conclusion of this study an external independent engineering consultant will be employed to evaluate the results.
SOURCE: Manas Petroleum Corp