Offshore Gas Exploration to Begin in Bulgaria's Khan Asparuh

The Noble Globetrotter II, the exploration vessel set to carry out the first drilling at the Black Sea block of Khan Asparuh is to be officially shown on Tuesday.

Bulgaria's Energy Minister Temenuzhka Petkova will also attend the ceremony alongside Total's General Manager for Bulgaria, Xavier Faugeras.

"The first geological surveys in relation to Khan Asparuh and Silistar are very optimistic," the Bulgarian National Radio quotes Petkova as saying.

Results of the first drilling by Total are to be unveiled within four months, depending on the weather conditions, she has made clear.

Khan Asparukh, the block for which Total signed an exploration contract, has a total areas of 14.220 square km and is located some 80 km offshore in the Black Sea in water depths of between 100 and 2000 meters.

The consortium of France's Total, Austria's OMV and Spain's Repsol, which signed the exploration and drilling contract, was initially to begin work at Khan Asparuh at the end of 2014, but the fall of global oil prices prompted it to postpone the first drilling.

Bulgaria hopes that substantial amounts of gas will be found beneath the seabed that will allow it to reduce its dependence on imports.

Russian energy giant Gazprom accounts for around 90% of the gas used in the country's energy mix, while the rest is domestically produced.