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By Upstream
staff
Tuesday, 16 June, 2009 – Somaliland is giving suitors an extra three
months to submit bids in its debut licensing round, with the Ministry of
Water & Mineral Resources pushing the deadline back until December.
The deadline for final submission of bids is now 15 December, rather
than August, with bids due to be opened on 19 February next year.
Concessions will now be awarded on 15 March next year instead of in
December.
The round includes eight concession blocks covering more than 89,624
square kilometers in both on- and offshore plays.
“The geology off the coast of Somaliland is analogous to the
oil-producing basins in nearby Yemen that have yielded several
discoveries to date,” the ministry in a statement.
“Yemen’s Balhaf Graben basin and Somaliland’s Berbera basin contain
similarities in fault trends and structural complexity.”
Ahead of the round, Norway's TGS-Nopec shot 5300 kilometers of seismic,
gravity and magnetic data in the offshore areas and 34,700 kilometers of
high resolution aeromagnetic data of the onshore areas.
The surveys mark the first geophysical data acquired in Somaliland for
almost 30 years.
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