DWM Petroleum AG a 100% subsidiary of Manas Petroleum Corp., a Baar, Switzerland based company, announces the signing of two production sharing agreements (PSA) with the Albanian government in Tirana. The PSA’s comprise blocks A,B, D, E, which cover approximately 3,100 square kilometers or approximately 766,000 acres. The televised signing took place at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Energy. Mr. Genc Ruli the Minister of Economy, Trade and Energy and DWM and Manas Chairman Heinz J. Scholz signed the PSA’s.
Under Albanian law the competent minister, in this case, Mr. Ruli, must approve and sign the agreement. Following this the council of ministers must ratify the agreement. This formality is expected to be completed at the summer’s end with the commencement of the session of the Council of Ministers.
This is a major milestone for Manas Petroleum and culminates almost two years of negotiations. A team of geologists and administrational staff has been recruited and work is underway to refine the original Shell/Coparex structural model with the assistance of Professor Selami Meco (paleontology, University of Tirana), and Agim Mesonjsi an Albanian-based structural geologist.
According to studies done by the previous block holders, Shell and Coparex, the 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. Work to date using the Shell/Coparex data set by the Manas Petroleum’s, Albania exploration team 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 company’s blocks. As mentioned previously, it is important to note that Shell and Coparex 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' $25 million data set for the first time. By combining the two data sets Manas Petroleum will further refine the Shell/Coparex models while greatly increasing the accuracy of the original Shell/Coparex estimates. Following the company's conclusion of this study an external independent engineering consultant will be employed to evaluate the results.