Montenegro has the potential to develop new gas projects, and by the end of the year, a public call will be issued for the concession contract for exploration, announced Minister of Energy and Mining, Saša Mujović. According to him, they are actively working on this call with colleagues from the Hydrocarbon Administration.
Responding to the question of whether we will ever see the benefits of oil exploration and exploitation, i.e., whether we will ever have significant revenue from oil or if it’s a finished story, Mujovićreminded that concessionaires Eni and Novatek spent almost €153 million over six years of exploration, including drilling the first exploration well, while the company Energean, which researched two smaller blocks (338 km2), spent about €7.5 million.
• Montenegro did not have a single euro of expense during this research, while during the same period, it earned almost €2.9 million (€2,840,644) from surface fees, and thus, it flowed into the state budget from 2016 to 2022 – he stated.
However, as he said, the main benefit of exploring the Montenegrin seabed is significant knowledge about the geological potential of the explored blocks, measured in terabytes of data in Montenegro’s ownership, which will be the cornerstone of further research in the future.
• Considering that neighbouring countries (Croatia, Italy, Albania) have more than 1,000 wells on their territory and have been exploiting oil and gas for decades, we believe that Montenegro also has potential in this area. Taking into account the European trend of green transition, we believe that we have the potential to develop new gas exploration projects. In this regard, a public call for the concession contract for exploration is planned for this year, on which we are actively working with colleagues from the Hydrocarbon Administration. By implementing this concession contract, Montenegro will obtain new geophysical data for a part of the seabed that has not been “covered” by production concession contracts so far and is still unexplored, which could ultimately be finalized by finding commercial gas reserves. Our optimism on this issue, in addition to positive experiences from the environment, is also supported by favourable data from Energean’s research – emphasized Mujović.
