Information had circulated recently, stating the discovery by the company "Europa Oil & Gas" of an oil field off the coast of the city of Agadir, with nearly one billion barrels, a quantity equivalent to Morocco's demand for a period of nearly 15 years. The Spanish newspaper "El Economista" provided a denial, specifying that it was a misinterpretation of the figures related to "exploratory resources" provided by the British company with the aim of attracting the attention of investors, before the license was abandoned definitively for lack of funding for the project.
According to the daily, which cites Jorge Navarro, vice-president of the Association of Spanish Geologists and Geophysicists in the oil field (AGGEP) and professor at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, the announcement of this "false discovery" is not new, since it dates back to 2022. Navarro explained that this story had begun with a misinterpretation of the figures of exploratory resources (that is to say, not yet discovered) that the British oil company had communicated.
El Economista emphasized that the company had limited itself to establishing and publishing a list of potential opportunities based on the reinterpretation of existing data, with the aim of attracting the attention of investors and companies to finance the drilling of an exploratory well in the waters located between Morocco and the Canary Islands. Despite this, some media published reports at the time and continue to do so today, mentioning a major oil discovery. However, the reality is that "as long as an exploratory well has not been drilled and the presence of oil has not been proven, it is not a discovery".
According to the same source, all this media controversy is based on what is described as an oil discovery from a document prepared by "Europa Oil & Gas" with the aim of finding a partner to finance the drilling of an exploratory well in the Inzegane license, located in Moroccan waters off the coast of Agadir.
The Spanish expert specifies that this type of document is known in the oil sector under the term "farm-out", which is used to propose the sale of a share of the license to other companies.
Professor Navarro insisted that to confirm the existence of such a quantity of oil, it would be necessary to drill the five exploratory opportunities, that is to say, to carry out five exploratory wells in the license in question, and that all must be positive and show quantities similar to those estimated previously. He emphasized, however, that this scenario, although theoretically conceivable, would require colossal investments and a very high level of exploratory success.
The same media added that to date, not a single drop of oil has been extracted in the region. The British company had abandoned the Inzegane license in November 2022 after failing to find a partner to finance the project due to its lack of financial capacity and left the country without having drilled a single well.
Finally, Navarro concluded that this story demonstrates the "lack of precision, speculation, and sensationalism with which some digital media treat technical subjects like this one, thus contributing to the dissemination of erroneous information and the building of unfounded expectations".
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