On 20 December 2017, Eni SpA announced that it had signed a Petroleum Agreement with Morocco national company, ONHYM, to enter the Tarfaya Offshore Shallow exploration permits I-XII. Â According to the agreement, which is subject to the approval of the Moroccan authorities, Eni will be the Operator of the license with a 75% interest, while ONHYM will retain the remaining 25% interest. The permits cover an area of 23,900 sq km, with a water depth ranging from 0 to 1,000 m. The licence covers the northern part of Aaiun-Tarfaya Basin (also known as the Laayoune-Tarfaya-Dakhla Basin), which is considered as one of the most prospective in Atlantic waters of Morocco. The Aaiun-Tarfaya Basin is a Mesozoic rift basin located both on and offshore the passive Atlantic margin of southern Morocco and extends southwards throughout Western Sahara. That basin, which can be considered so far as almost unexplored, is formed of a faulted basement made of Precambrian and Paleozoic rocks, overlain by a Triassic-Liassic sequence composed mainly of clastics, including microconglomerates, sandstones, red shales with evaporites and lagoonal deposits. The shaly and saliferous plastic formations should have generated halokinetic structures. The post-rift sequence starts with the Liassic-Dogger sub-sequence related to the opening of the Atlantic and to the progressive setting of a marine environment and carbonate sedimentation. In wells MO-2, MO-8 and Cap Juby 1 located in the northern part of the basin, the Liassic and Dogger sections are made of limestones with sandy and shaly intervals. The second post-rift sub-sequence is a true passive margin basin formed in Late Jurassic time, with a carbonate platform to the east and an open marine domain to the west. Reefal build-ups are present along the edge of this platform. During the Cretaceous, sands and conglomerates were deposited in the east of the basin, and thick shaly and silty rocks to the west, and a fourth post-rift sequence started at the end of Albian time, with marls, shaly limestones, shales, organic rich bituminous chalks and shaly limestones with chert and phosphates. Phosphates series were deposited during a regression period starting during the Coniacian. Alpine movements have produced regional unconformities during the Oligocene and Miocene times along the shelf break. Tertiary erosion has formed canyons later filled by Cenozoic turbiditic deposits.  Â 
Morocco, not found