The Maltese continental shelf is the largest and most valuable asset held by the Republic of Malta. It covers an area of 70,000 km2 and is estimated to be worth billions of euro in value. Exploration for hydrocarbons over the past 65 years resulted in 13 wells and several kilometres of seismic lines. All 13 wells are not producing. From 1980, 19 licences have been awarded: 10 exploration licences under Exploration Study Agreements and 9 exploration/production licences under Production Sharing Contracts.

Malta’s continental shelf and land area is circa one-twelfth of that of Italy, although the density of wells over the Maltese continental shelf is about forty times less than that of Italy. The Maltese continental shelf remains under explored. Over the past 60 years, the Maltese oil exploration programme showed 2 anomalies compared to global and regional trends :

1.  The frequency of Maltese oil wells through time and the depth reached by wells is generally inversely related to the global price of oil (r = -0.32), i.e., when the global price of oil is high, fewer and shallower wells were bored in Malta.

2.  Maltese wells are relatively deep: >50% of Maltese wells exceed 4 km depth, whereas <2% productive American wells (based on >2 million U.S. wells) and 6% of Italian wells (based on >7000 Italian wells) exceed 4 km depth.

Exploration have been the Jurassic carbonate reservoirs productive in offshore Sicily and Palaeogene carbonates equivalent to Tunisian targets. Both targets have failed to produce any oil and gas and may be inapplicable to Malta.

Map showing location of oil wells and continental shelf claims