Exploration for natural gas off Dobrich may accelerate after Canada’s Trillion Energy (formerly Park Place Energy), which holds the rights to the Vranino block, announced it would cooperate with an unnamed major energy trader. The two parties have signed an agreement to share information on potential new business opportunities to develop together. This affects both the Vranino project in Bulgaria, where there are significant gas resources from coal seams, and new opportunities in Turkey, where the Canadian company is already extracting fuels in the Black Sea.
The news came in parallel with the parliament’s decision to support gas exploration in the Bulgarian waters. At the end of last week, the deputies assigned the Minister of Energy to conduct negotiations for a possible shareholding of the Bulgarian Energy Holding in the consortium between TotalEnergies and OMV Petrom, which holds the rights to the “Khan Asparuh” block.
Opportunities in the region
From Trillion Energy’s brief announcement, it is clear that the partners will explore strategic opportunities in the field of energy in Bulgaria and Turkey. The energy trader was not named due to a confidentiality agreement, but the company is said to have a turnover of more than $100 billion by 2022 and is engaged in the purchase, distribution and sale of natural gas.
The Canadian company received a permit to search and explore for oil and gas in the Vranino block, which has an area of nearly 400 decares, in 2014. However, so far, activities there have not yet started. According to an estimate made by the Netherlands’ Sewell & Associates at the time, the likely natural gas resources in the block were 573 billion cubic feet (over 16 billion cubic meters), but expectations were for much more.
The gas in “Vranino”
What is specific about the potential deposit is that the gas is located in coal seams, which requires a special extraction technology. This in turn has led to attacks on the project, with opponents suspecting that shale gas extraction or coal gasification is being planned – something the company has vehemently denied.
At the same time, the decision of the eco-ministry that the overall work project for the studies does not need an environmental assessment, but one will be done for the individual drillings and stages, was challenged and canceled by the court in 2017. Subsequently, the company started preparing the documentation for the environmental assessment, but so far there is no public information that it has been approved. Only after this is done, the 5-year term of the permit for search and exploration in “Vranino” will begin to run. The company plans to drill 5 exploratory wells in the block, which was already extensively explored before the changes.
2023-07-25 03:07:00
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