In a statement Seyyed said, “[Petrobras] will invest a total of US$32 million for the exploratory operations. The [contract] requires the Brazilian company to pay for all the operations costs including the seismography, geology and drillings operation expenditures.”

“The duration for the execution of the contract [is] 3.5 years and in case of yielding promising results, 1.5 more years and [another] US$10 million [will] be added to the contract duration terms,” added the official, without elaborating further.