Total Preparing to Start Drilling for Oil, Gas off Bulgarian Coast Early Next Year

France’s Total is preparing to start drilling for oil and gas off Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast in early 2016, Reuters reported.

“It depends on the availability of our contractors when exactly we will start, but everything is going according to the plan,” Xavier Faugeras, general manager of Total’s Bulgaria division, told Reuters on Monday.

In 2012 Total signed an exploration contract with Bulgaria for  hydrocarbon drilling at Khan Asparuh block and teamed up with Austria’s OMV and Spain’s Repsol to work on the permit. The 14,220-sq.km block is located some 80 kilometers offshore in the Black Sea in water depths of between 100 and 2,000 meters.

The international exploratory consortium decided in December 2014 to delay drilling at Khan Asparuh block  by up to a year due to the slump in global oil prices.

Faugeras spoke two days after Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov announced that drilling for oil and gas off the country’s Black Sea coast would begin in February next year.

Bulgaria is expected to select in early autumn 2015 holders of exploration permits for oil and gas at its Block 1-14 Silistar and Block 1-22 Teres.

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