Drilling at Bulgaria's Khan Asparuh to Begin in February 2016

First drilling at the Khan Asparuh block in the Black Sea, where significant gas deposits are though to lie, are now scheduled for February 2016, an official has said.

Delyan Dobrev, a former Energy Minister who now heads Parliament's Energy Committee, told reportes on Sunday (a workday in Bulgaria) that finding vast gas fields was quite likely given that neighboring Romania had found "some 80 billion cubic meters" just 15 km from the Bulgarian border, or near Bulgaria's section of the block.

Bucharest earlier declared the estimated amount was between 40 and 80 bcm, numbers roughly confirmed by Petrom and ExxonMobil which discovered a deposit of 42-84 bcm in 2012.

A consortium of Total (France), OMV (Austria) and Repsol (Spain) was due to start drilling this year, but in December announced it would postpone its operation, citing budgetary restrictions.

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