An oil company based in Israel has been awarded a licence to conduct an exploration study about 70 kilometres to the southwest of Malta.

Offshore Area Five, totalling about 8,700 square kilometres, was awarded to Ratio Malta Limited, an affiliate of Ratio Oil Exploration Limited, based in Tel Aviv.

The government said the agreement was for two years. In the first year, the work obligations covered the reprocessing and interpretation of existing data and the compilation of all available data in a geographical information system.

In the second year, the work will focus on at least 1,200 kilometres of 2D seismic data and gravity and magnetic data.