DUSHANBE, September 21, Asia-Plus — Tajik-Swiss joint venture Somon Oil will start exploration of oil and gas reserves of the Obchai Qalacha and Navobod fields in the northern Sughd province before the end of this year, the Somon Oil director Khurshed Bobojonov said. 

According to him, the enterprise received licenses from the Tajik government to explore oil and gas reserves of these fields last August.  

 Somon Oil has worked in Tajikistan over the last two years.  It had previously been engaged in extraction and realization of coal in Tajikistan. 

The Swiss side owns 70 percent of shares in Somon Oil and more than 50 percent of exploration work will be funded by it.  

According to experts, the aggregate raw-materials resources of the oil and gas bearing areas in Tajikistan amount to about 1,000 billion tons of reference fuel (113 million tons of oil and 863 billion cubic meters of natural gas).  80.8 percent of them are located in southwest of the country and 19.2 percent in northern Tajikistan.  At the same time, production work at oil and gas fields require considerable expenditure, since hydrocarbon deposits occur at depths ranging from 6.5 to 8 kilometers, therefore foreign experts question the profitability of such deposits.

In northern Tajikistan, the most promising for development is the Eastern Supetau filed, which has possible gas reserves of 14.3 billion cubic meters and oil reserves of 20.5 million tons.   

In southern and southwest Tajikistan, the most promising deposits are the Rengan, Kashakum, Sargazon, Yalgizak, and Eastern Olimtoy. 

The Rengan field has possible gas reserves of 35 billion cubic meters, the Kashakum field has possible oil reserves of 4.9 million tons, the Sargazon field has possible gas reserves of 30 billion cubic meters, Yalgizak has possible gas reserves of up to 20 billion cubic meters and the Eastern Olimtoy has possible oil reserves of 3.9 million tons.