TASHKENT (TCA) — Vietnam’s Petrovietnam Exploration & Production (PVEP) has suspended geological prospecting for oil and gas in Uzbekistan, Novosti Uzbekistana news agency reported.
PVEP has conducted geological prospecting work in the Ustyurt region in northwestern Uzbekistan but it has suspended work due to the current negative situation in the world oil and gas market.
“The Vietnamese company has not yet made a decision to cancel the license agreement for geological prospecting as it is waiting for improvement of the situation in the world market,” the news agency quoted a source in the State Geology Committee of Uzbekistan.
In 2010 PVEP and Uzbekistan’s national oil and gas company Uzbekneftegaz signed an agreement on conducting geological exploration at the Kossor investment block during five years.
According to the project’s operator, Kossor Operating Company LLC, initial drilling received a gas flow at non-commercial rates and the company decided to continue exploration at Kossor. Total investments in exploration at the block were expected to amount to $45 million until the end of 2015, the company earlier said.
Earlier, Malaysia’s Petronas terminated geological prospecting work at an investment block in Uzbekistan’s Surkhandarya province.
In May 2011, Petronas also withdrew from an international consortium for exploration and development of hydrocarbons in the Uzbek part of the Aral Sea. In June 2011, the Malaysian company also reduced its share in the project to build a gas to liquid (GTL) plant to produce synthetic fuel in the south of Uzbekistan from 33.3 percent down to 11 percent.
