According to the State Agency of Oil and Gas of Georgia, the company OMV Petrom will start active work next year, while an environmental impact assessment report will be prepared in 2021.
Under the contract, the company will conduct oil and gas exploration and extraction in the Black Sea Continental Shelf for a period of 25 years. In addition, OMV Petrom will contribute $ 600,000 to the state budget within a month as a signing bonus, and if it finds oil or gas in the license area, it will pay the Georgian government an additional $ 5 million. Under the contract, the company gives 30 percent of the entrails to the state free of charge before reimbursing the costs and 60 percent after returning the expenses.
According to the head of the State Agency of Oil and Gas of Georgia, Giorgi Tatishvili, Ukraine, Russia, and Turkey are already extracting gas in the Black Sea basin. Romania has recently joined the ranks of these countries, where OMV Petrom has discovered quite large reserves of oil and gas. The search is underway in Bulgaria as well.
"The company OMV Petro is more focused on gas because their internal study in the territorial waters of Georgia shows a high probability of finding a gas field," says the head of the State Agency of Oil and Gas of Georgia and refrains from naming a specific figure for the amount of oil or gas reserves that can be extracted in the Georgian waters of the Black Sea.
"Bringing the process to the discovery requires a solid investment. OMV Petrom would not have taken up the job if they had not expected a solid supply here. The share of the discovered product, oil or gas, is brought by the state for free. The share that will remain with the company should provide both reimbursements of expenses and profit. The economic assessment that has been made fully provides the basis for the fact that here is the stock that will give a profit to both the state and the company," Tatishvili says and adds that the company is expected to start drilling in 2024.
"A geophysical ship will enter our waters next year. We anticipate that it will take seven months of offshore surveys; by early 2023, we will already know the points that need to be drilled. Drilling works will probably start in 2024," Giorgi Tatishvili explained.
OMV PETROM starts oil exploration in Georgia. OMV Petrom is one of the largest European companies, and its founder, the Austrian OMV Group, is among the top ten oil companies in Europe.
