Romania's top oil and gas group, OMV Petrom on Thursday declined to confirm media reports about thediscovery of a
gas depositof around 20 billion cubic metresin the Black Sea.
"The
operations for the evaluation of the Pelican Sud prospect are still ongoing,"
OMV Petrom spokesmanAndrei Cristian Vlad told SeeNews, adding that the company
denies the information related to the estimated volume of the gas
deposit.
Local financial daily Ziarul Financiar reported on Thursday that
OMV Petromand U.S. oil giantExxonMobil have discovered a significantgas
deposit at thethird well drilled by the two companies in the Neptun Block,
Pelican South-1.
The value of this discovery is estimated at around 3.5
billion euro ($4 billion), according to the daily's calculations.
The two
companies started drilling the Pelican South-1 wildcat well, locatedabout 155
kilometres offshore in the Romanian sector of the Black Sea, in
October.
ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Romania Limited
(EMEPRL)and OMV Petrom each hold 50%of the deepwater sector of the Neptun
Block. EMEPRL is the operator.
The Neptun Block deep water sector covers
an area of approximately 7,500 square kilometres in water depths ranging from
100 to1,700 meters.
In 2012, Exxon Mobil and OMV Petrom announced the
Domino-1 exploration well had encountered natural gas in the deep water sector
of the Neptun Block.Last year, the companies completed drilling the Domino-2
well and data from the well are being evaluated