Four oil companies have permission from Rabat to drill near the Canary Islands
Pedro Sánchez during his meeting with Mohamed VI in Rabat. /
The authorizations are part of the Moroccan plan to reactivate hydrocarbon prospecting in the 2022-2024 period
As part of the strategy set to preserve its energy sovereignty,
Morocco is developing an “ambitious policy” -in the words of its Minister for Energy Transition, Leila Benali- with the aim of increasing the level of hydrocarbon reserves, which entails the
granting of permits to prospect for oil and gas in waters near the Canary Islands.
Specifically, there are four companies that have authorization from Rabat to
explore three areas near the archipelago: the British Europa Oil & Gas in the Inezgane offshore zone, north of Lanzarote, the Italian ENI and the Qatari Qatar Petroleum, which share a concession to drill in the Tarfaya area off the coast of Fuerteventura, and the Israeli company Ratio Petroleum Partnership in the Dajla Atlantique oceanic block, in the waters of Western Sahara.
The authorizations are framed in the
prospecting reactivation plan for the period 2022-2024 announced on April 14 by the director general of the National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines (ONHYM), Amina Benkhadra, before the Moroccan House of Representatives.
The British company Europa Oil & Gas, which has had a permit since 2019 to survey and exploit the Inezgane offshore concession, an area of more than 11,000 square kilometers in the Agadir basin, with a 75% stake, once again announced -already had done in 2021- the
identification of a potential volume of resources equivalent to 1,000 million barrels of oil, about 175 kilometers northwest of La Graciosa. In any case, it is the result of an exploratory survey, whose exploitation, if the existence of such resources is confirmed, would take years and would entail a very high cost that does not ensure the profitability of its extraction.
Among the projects authorized by Morocco are also prospecting planned by the Italian company Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI), associated with Quatar Petroleum, to look for hydrocarbons in the block called Tarfaya Offshore Shallow, a
strip of 23,900 square kilometers less than 100 kilometers from the Canary Islands. The permits were obtained by ENI in 2017 with a profit share of 75% and two years later, in 2019, Qatar Petroleum bought 30% of the Italian company's share in the agreement with Morocco.
In September 2021, ONHYM also closed an agreement with the Israeli company Ratio Petroleum Partnership for the exploration of potential oil and gas pockets in the ocean block called Dajla Atlantique, with a
109,000 square kilometer area encompassing Western Saharan waters south of the Canary Islands.
The agreement grants 100% of the exploration rights to the subsidiary Ratio Gibraltar for eight years, which may be extended for two more years if the Israeli company d
discover oil or gas on the Atlantic coast to a depth of approximately 3,000 meters.
Ratio Gibraltar has 75% of the shares and the National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines of Morocco the remaining 25%. In compliance with the law in force in the Alawite Kingdom, the Moroccan State will receive a 7% stake if oil is discovered at a depth of more than 200 meters with a production of more than 500,000 tons, and 3.5% for a
natural gas production of more than 500,000 cubic meters.
The ocean block over which the Israeli company has authorization extends along the coastal strip from the city of Dajla to the border with Mauritania, in the waters of Western Sahara, over which
Morocco does not have recognized sovereignty while the decolonization conflict pending in the UN has not been resolved.
So far, the only confirmed find is located 38 kilometers off the coast of Larache, where the British company Chariot Oil announced in January that it found gas in the Anchois-2 well, although in this case
its future exploitation does not pose a risk for the Canary Islands given the greater distance.
