| Manas Petroleum is a Baar, Switzerland headquartered international oil exploration and development company. It was founded as a private company in 2004 and during its first two years spent approximately $7 million acquiring and advancing its Kyrgyz, Tajik and Albanian projects. Its portfolio now totals more than 5 million acres in 5 countries. Manas Petroleum's principal strategy is to acquire and farm-out key land positions in major oil basins which have large seismically defined prospects near significant oil or gas production. At the core of this strategy is that Manas farm-out partners pay all costs until commercial production allowing Manas to retain substantial carried interests.
The Company's objective is to maximize potential growth while significantly reducing financial costs and risk. A further goal is project diversity, as it should ensure the company's rapid transition to a more advanced stage of its planned evolution: the co-development of major hydrocarbon assets. |
| Manas Petroleum's first project is in the Kyrgyz Republic, Central Asia's only democracy and member of the World Trade Organization. In the Kyrgyz Republic, Manas has acquired and farmed-out to Santos International Holdings Pty Ltd., 70% of its interest in 4 licenses, covering 2,264 square kilometers. This 70% is being granted in consequence of it funding and conducting a $54 million seismic, exploration and appraisal drilling program. |
| Adjacent to Manas Tuzluk Prospect within the Kyrgyz Republic license area, Manas acquired an Exploration license in Tajikistan. The geology is an extension of the Manas Kyrgyz Northern license area principally the Tuzluk area. Manas has now identified more than 10 leads and prospects on both its Kyrgyz and Tajik licenses. |
| DWM Petroleum, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Manas Petroleum Corporation, has legal title to two Production Contracts (PSCs) covering Blocks 13 and 14. Twenty-six percent of the beneficial title to these blocks is held in trust for others -- ten percent in favor of a Mongolian oil and gas company, subject to regulatory approval and negotiations, and eight percent for each of two investor groups. The blocks cover an aggregate of over 20,000 square kilometers (almost five million acres) of land and are located on Mongolia's southern border. The production contracts provide for a five-year exploration period (with two optional six month extensions) beginning on April 21, 2009, and a twenty-year exploitation period (with two five year extensions). The Mongolian government is entitled to 12.5% royalty interest. |
Manas has acquired three production sharing agreements (PSCs) covering six blocks on the northern flank of Albania's oil rich fold and thrust belt. The agreements, which cover blocks A, B, D, E, 2 and 3 have been approved by the National Agency of Natural Resources (AKBN) and was ratified by the Energy Ministry.
Manas completed in February 2010 the transaction with respect of its Albanian project with Petromanas Energy Inc., a Canadian company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange, in exchange for cash and shares of Petromanas Energy Inc. |
| One focus of Manas Petroleum's is the exploration and development of giant hydrocarbon assets in principally countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union (FSU) or its satellites, and that are now growing more moderate as they are increasingly influenced by Western Europe and China. As this occurs two critical elements remain for what Manas' management views as a historic opportunity to discover and develop major oil assets. The first is that though Russian exploration and development concepts and technologies were previously decades behind that of the Western world, Soviet record keeping of geological results across the union was excellent. For example, an overview of Soviet Kyrgyz Republic production and drilling records shows an obvious trend towards larger fields as depth is increased. It also indicates that more large discoveries should occur as deep tests continue. Reinforcing this conclusion is recent reprocessing of other meticulously kept Russian records: Soviet 1980s-vintage Kyrgyz seismic. The results Manas and its partners have obtained indicate the existence of numerous, large, deep under-thrust, potentially oil containing, un-drilled structures. |
Manas employs geologists and executives that are experts in this area, and have demonstrated they have access to much of this information. Manas is examining this archived data using state-of-the-art Western concepts and technology in its search for evidence of giant oil deposits.
The second element is that many of these Former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries' business environments are starting to show dramatic improvements, making operating within their borders highly attractive.
In Manas Petroleum's favor is the fact that its executives are extremely well acquainted with Former Soviet Union and Eastern European political realities. They have a proven record of being able to operate and acquire world-class assets there and they know which countries are evolving in an attractive pro-oil business fashion. They also possess crucial geological expertise enabling them to act extremely fast when opportunities arise. |
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