(Adds quotes, background)
SOFIA, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Bulgaria sealed a deal with RoyalDutch Shell on Tuesday to explore for oil and gas in anoffshore block in the Black Sea in a bid to end its almost totaldependence on Russian natural gas.
Shell won a tender for a five-year permit for deepwaterexploration at the 1-14 Silistar block that covers 7,000 squarekm in September and pledged to invest 18.6 million euros ($20.5million) in seismic surveys.
"The licence that we have been awarded today allows us toevaluate the potential for oil and gas in offshore Bulgaria.This process can be quite a long process and with muchuncertainty," said Eileen Wilkinson, regional director at ShellInternational Exploration and Production, after the signing.
French oil company Total, together with itspartners Austria's OMV and Spain's Repsol,plans to start drilling for gas and oil in Bulgaria's biggestoffshore block in the Black Sea, 1-21 Han Asparuh, by June.
Silistar is near a block in Romanian waters where OMV hassaid it could produce up to 84 billion cubic metres of gas,raising Bulgaria's hopes it will be able to exploit reserves offits coast to diversify its energy supplies.
Bulgaria is building a gas pipeline with Greece and isoverhauling its gas transport network in the hope of becoming aregional gas hub and transporting Russian and Caspian gas, aswell as gas it finds at its Black Sea blocks, to central Europe.
At present, the EU's poorest country meets over 95 percentof its gas needs with imports from Russia's Gazprom,which also come only via one route - a situation that its alliesin Brussels and Washington want to see changed.
"Now nobody can say that Bulgaria is not working actively todiversify its supplies of oil and gas," Prime Minister BoikoBorisov, who attended the signing, said.
($1 = 0.9094 euros) (Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova; Editing by Radu Marinas andMark Potter)
