« Un engagement d’exploration est prévu pour 2014 sur la base des résultats de l’étude sismique 3D, acquis en 2013. » Parmi les trois projets présentés, le permis de Mahdia a suscité un nombre croissant d’articles médiatiques, au cours des deux dernières semaines. La mise à jour des opérations en Tunisie », publiée le 26 aout dernier, présente « les résultats préliminaires du forage du puits EMD-1, rattaché au permis de Mahdia ».
As per Ridha Bouzouada’s claim that Circle Oil had justified reporting an important discovery as «nothing but a simulation based on drilling work,» L’Economiste Maghrébin has asked whether or not the Irish oil company might not have contrived the results of its drill findings to boost its numbers on the London Stock Exchange. Affiliated Tunisian institions and, by extension, Tunisian media, generally sparing in their (public) treatment of issues concerning foreign investment in the energies and hydrocarbon sectors, may in this case be spudding a more valuable “pontential large discovery” than that which has been so vastly and insouciantly associated with Circle Oil’s operations in Tunisian oilfields.
