Azernews.Az

By Aynur Jafarova

PetroVietnam Exploration Production Corporation (PVEP) will start exploration work at the Molabaur investment block in the Ustyurt region of Uzbekistan by late 2013, PVEP representative Nguyen Thanh said at an oil and gas exhibition in Tashkent this week.

"We received a license for exploration in late April...We will announce a tender to start drilling in late 2013," Thanh said.

In February 2010, PVEP and Uzbekneftegaz National Holding Company (NHC) signed an agreement on the basic principles of geological exploration work on the Kossor investment block in the Ustyurt region for a five-year term with an investment worth $29.4 million.

In June 2012, PVEP and Uzbekneftegaz signed an agreement of geological exploration on the Molabaur investment block with a total area of 3,600 kilometers for five years. The investments of the Vietnamese company will amount to $61.6 million. The operator of the project is Kossor Operating Company LLC.

Currently there are 44 investment blocks in the Uzbek territory for conducting geological exploration work for foreign investors. Licenses for 22 of them have already been issued to foreign companies.

Uzbekneftegaz said that Uzbekistan intends to propose six investment blocks with promising hydrocarbon reserves for foreign investors to conduct exploration operations in 2013 and 2014.

These are three blocks in the Bukhara-Khiva region, two blocks in the Middle Syr Darya region and one block in the Fergana region with total probable reserves of hydrocarbons of about 500 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 70 million tons of liquid hydrocarbons.

Uzbekistan is rich in hydrocarbon resources. About 60 percent of the Uzbek territory possesses potential oil and gas reserves. Uzbekistan is ranked third among the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States and fifteenth in the world in terms of annual natural gas production.

The projected reserves of hydrocarbons are about 10 billion tons of standard fuel, while prospective ones amount to about 2 billion tons.

Currently, there are five oil and gas regions in Uzbekistan - Ustyurt, Bukhara-Khiva, Surkhandarya, Hissar and Fergana - and three promising ones (Khorezm, Middle Syr Darya and Zarafshan).

211 hydrocarbon fields have been discovered in oil and gas-rich regions of the country, 108 of which are gas and gas condensate fields while 103 are oil and gas, oil-gas condensate and oil fields. More than 50 percent of the fields are under development while 35 percent are ready for exploration. The exploration work is underway at the rest of the deposits.