Cyprus announces third round of licensing for offshore natural gas exploration

Cyprus has launched a third round of licensing for offshore gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean island's exclusive economic zone, an official statement said on Thursday.

The statement by the Ministry of Commerce and Energy said an announcement for the bidding was published in the European Union's official journal.

The announcement invites interested parties to submit bids within a period of 120 days to obtain a license for exploratory drillings in blocks 6, 8 and 10 off the south shores of Cyprus.

A decision on the winning tenders will have to be made by the government within six months from the start of the bidding period.

In the previous two rounds of licensing, Texas-based Noble Energy and French Total obtained concessions for exploration in one block each and Italian-South Korean consortium ENI-Kogas obtained rights for drilling in three blocks.

Of the three companies only Noble energy tapped a sizeable deposit of natural gas and is now in the process of planning its exploitation in two to four years.

ENI has failed to find commercially exploitable deposits of gas and Total is scheduled to make its first drilling this year after reconsidering its exploration plan which was based on drilling in lime geological layers.

Energy companies have been revising their exploration models after ENI discovered a huge deposit of natural gas in carbonate layers in an Egyptian field adjacent to the Cypriot blocks.

All three blocks in the new round of bidding are within an area covered by a large undersea mountain range called Eratosthenis, which experts have said is the source of the natural gas discovered by Egypt.

Cypriot government sources have said that they expect a large interest in the new bidding from large energy companies. Endit