Tel Aviv, November 29 - Neftegaz.RU. Israel has launched its 2nd bid round to grant exploration licenses for natural gas and oil in Israel’s economic waters in the Eastern Mediterranean. Earlier in November, Israel’s Ministry of Energy announced the bid would be launched later during the month. The ministry then officially launched the bid round on November 26.
In the new bid round, licenses for 19 blocks will be issued in 5 zones. Each block measures up to 400 sq km and each zone, consisting of multiple blocks, can be as large as 1600 sq km. The decision to market the blocks in zones is to allow better correlation between the exploration areas and subsurface geological structures that potentially contain oil and gas reservoirs.
The zones are located in the southern extent of Israel’s economic waters, an area which has been previously licensed in part and had previous seismic research and limited exploration activity.
The basic participation guarantee amount for the 1st block licensed in a zone will be $2.5 million. Every additional block in the same zone will require another $0.5 million guarantee. The maximum guarantee required to receive 4 consecutive blocks (zone) will be $4 million.
In addition, before drilling, the licensee will be required to place an additional guarantee, in the sum of $5 million. An exploration license will be granted for an initial period of 3 years.
To broaden the participation of as many new bidders as possible in the bid round, the Israeli Energy Ministry has decided to limit the number of licenses granted to any one party to 8 licenses.
