Albanian Production Sharing Agreements Approved

a Baar, Switzerland based company, today announced its wholly owned subsidiary....

  a Baar, Switzerland based company, today announced its wholly owned subsidiary, DWM Petroleum AG, has signed two productionsharing agreements (PSA) with the Albanian government in Tirana. The PSAscomprise blocks A, B, D, E, which cover approximately 3,100 squarekilometers or approximately 766,000 acres. The televised signing took placeat the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Energy. Mr. Genc Ruli the Minister ofEconomy, Trade and Energy and DWM and Manas Chairman Heinz J. Scholz signedthe PSAs.    Under Albanian law the competent minister, in this case, Mr. Ruli, mustapprove and sign the agreement. Following this the council of ministersmust ratify the agreement. This formality is expected to be completed atthe summer's end with the commencement of the session of the Council ofMinisters.    This is a major milestone for Manas Petroleum and culminates almost twoyears of negotiations. A team of geologists and administrational staff hasbeen recruited and work is underway to refine the original Shell/Coparexstructural model with the assistance of Professor Selami Meco(paleontology, University of Tirana), and Agim Mesonjsi an Albanian-basedstructural geologist.    According to studies done by the previous block holders, Shell andCoparex, the four blocks hold a large deep under-thrust structure with apotential to hold a total of more than 800 million BOE of light oil andnatural gas. Numerous oil seeps have been located where the reservoir rockoutcrops along a significant portion of the eastern side of the Manas'blocks. Work to date using the Shell/Coparex data set by the ManasPetroleum's Albania exploration team has outlined a series of largeprospects within the blocks.    Over 350 million barrels of oil have been produced from shallow oilfields which begin 100 Km to the south of the company's blocks. Asmentioned previously, it is important to note that Shell and Coparex workedindependently of one another in their initial discovery of the overallunder-thrust structure and thus did not benefit from each other's seismicacquisition or understanding of the area's geology. Manas Petroleum iscombining the two companies' $25 million data set for the first time. Bycombining the two data sets Manas Petroleum will further refine theShell/Coparex models while greatly increasing the accuracy of the originalShell/Coparex estimates. Following the company's conclusion of this studyan external independent engineering consultant will be employed to evaluatethe results.    Tajikistan Update:    On July 12th the company announced it had been awarded an explorationlicense in Tajikistan. This license, the Novobod-Obchai-Kalacha, contains anumber of under-thrust leads and prospects including the Khodja-Bakirganwhich is several kilometers north of the company's Kyrgyz South Tuzlukprospect. The Novobod is also adjacent to the Niyazbek-North Karachikum oilfield which is in Tajikistan. As in Kyrgyz Republic the company has norights to production or reserves contained in oil fields which alreadyexist on its Tajik license. Approximately 60% of the company's Tajik blockis covered by former Soviet era seismic data. It is within this area thatthe company's targeted leads and prospects are found and that thegeological and structural setting appears to be very similar to thecompany's highly prospective Kyrgyz, Tuzluk block. Seven prospects of asimilar size to or larger than the Kyrgyz, South Tuzluk prospect have beenseismically identified on the Tajik license. Adding the 3,243 squarekilometers covered by the company's Kyrgyz blocks to the 1,227 squarekilometers covered by its recently awarded Tajik block and the company'stargeted under-thrust oil prospects and leads are contained within an areatotaling 4,480 square kilometers and not "more than 11,000 square km" aspreviously stated. This translates to approximately 1 million acres thatthe company has amassed in the Fergana Basin. Because it comprises theareas the company considers to have the highest potential to contain largeoil fields, the company's planned acquisition program in the basin islargely complete. As mentioned in the previous news release negotiations tofarm out the Tajik block are advanced. Seismic acquisition on the new Tajikblock is expected to commence within this summer.    This Press Release contains certain forward-looking statements withinthe meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. TheCompany has tried, whenever possible, to identify these forward-lookingstatements using words such as "anticipates", "believes", "estimates","expects", "plans", "intends", "potential" and similar expressions. Thesestatements reflect the Company's current beliefs and are based uponinformation currently available to it. Accordingly, such forward-lookingstatements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factorswhich could cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievementsto differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such statements.The Company undertakes no obligation to update or advise in the event ofany change, addition or alteration to the information catered in this Press