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By Emma Farge
DAKAR, July 5 (Reuters) - Gambian Oil Minister Fafa Sanyang confirmed on Wednesday that the West African nation had ended talks to extend the exploration rights of Oslo-listed African Petroleum AFPC.OL for two offshore areas.
"That's the truth. You already got the message about the licences," he said, referring to comments made on Tuesday to Reuters by the oil ministry's permanent secretary for petroleum, Mod K. Ceesay. Petroleum, founded by Australian-Romanian billionaire Frank Timis, said it was "surprised and disappointed" by the comments from Gambian officials and reiterated that it still holds the rights to the licences.
"The licence agreements have a dispute mechanism which we fully intend to utilise if the Gambian authorities maintain this stance. However, our preferred route is to engage in more constructive dialogue in order to establish a resolution that is in the best interests of all stakeholders," a spokesman said on Wednesday.
The A1 and A4 licence blocks are adjacent to blocks in Senegal's waters where Britain's Cairn Energy CNE.L made the world's largest discovery of 2014. A recent evaluation of the blocks cited by African Petroleum suggests they could contain over 3 billion barrels of oil.
African Petroleum said in April that it was in exclusive talks with an unnamed third party to sell a 70 percent stake in the blocks along with another one in neighbouring Senegal.
Its share price fell as much as 57 percent during trade on Tuesday before partially recovering. It was down 37 percent at 2.35 crowns by 1117 GMT on Wednesday with 29 million shares traded, Thomson Reuters Eikon data showed.