Shell to Drill for Oil, Gas off Bulgarian Coast

Royal Dutch Shell told reporters in Sofia on Tuesday that it will launch an exploratory drilling operation next month in the Han Kubrat oil and gas field off the coast of Burgas in the Black Sea.

The 90-day exploration will commence off the Noble Globetrotter II ship on 1 April 1, about 80 kilometres from Burgas in south-east Bulgaria.

The drilling will use conventional methods and not hydraulic fracking of the rock surface, said the venture manager of the project, Alexander Kayes.

Kayes estimated the chances of finding commercially exploitable resources at one in five.

"The period between the exploration phase and the beginning of the exploitation and the production of the crude oil from the potential oil field may take between six to ten years," Kayes said.

The exploitation phase will then continue for between 20 and 30 years after that, he added.

He said that oil and gas fields with similar characteristics yield up to 75,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

Shell is expected to invest between $50 million and $150 million in the project, on top of the $35 million invested so far.

The exploratory drilling is being launched four years after the Bulgarian government held a tender for the exploration of Han Kubrat field in 2015.

The tender was won by Shell in 2016 and the British-Dutch company carried out geological and seismographic surveys at the end of 2016.

Another oil and gas exploration project is currently taking place off the Bulgarian Black Sea coast.

French oil company Totaland, Austria's OMV and Repsolstarted launched the drilling operation in the Han Asparuh field close to the port city of Varna in northern Bulgaria. The company got its drilling permit in 2012 from the Bulgarian government.<...