Morocco Signs Onshore Oil & Gas Exploration Deals with Shell & Repsol

Morocco has signed an onshore oil and gas exploration deal with Royal Dutch Shell and Spain’s Repsol covering the region of Souss Massa.

The explorations will be carried out at an onshore site in the southern region of Souss-Massa, which covers an area of 9,990 square km, Morocco’s National Office for Hydrocarbons and Mining (ONHYM) said in a statement.

Repsol, one of the world’s leading publicly-traded oil and gas companies, will be the operator of the project, the statement said.

Figures show a total of $164 million is expected to be invested in oil and gas explorations in Morocco in 2018.

Investments in oil and gas explorations onshore and offshore Morocco since 2015 have totaled $2.8 billion (25 billion dirhams), 96% of which was paid by ONHYM’s partners.

Earlier in January, British company SDX Energy confirmed gas discoveries in four of its wells in the Gharb region.

Following its material successes in the Tendrara project in eastern Morocco, Sound Energy, the European and African focused upstream gas company, announced plans to shift its focus entirely on accelerating exploration drillings in Morocco.

Sound Energy had announced that it would soon start commercializing the first gas from Sidi Mokhtar in Essaouira Basin, central Morocco.

Several drillings for oil and gas operations are being conducted in Morocco, which imports about 95 percent of its energy needs. For foreign firms, the country represents a stable frontier in North Africa that is poised to be on the international gas map in the years to come.