MOL's first domestic exploration partnership signed

MOL Hungarian Oil and Gas Public Limited Company hereby announces that on the 25th of August, 2006 it signed a partnership agreement with Hungarian Horizon Energy Ltd., an American-Hungarian independent exploration company, to conduct joint exploration of the gas prone Komádi-Vésztő area, East Hungary.

The joint exploratory area consists of exploration acreages of both companies, where the companies have equal, 50%-50% participation interests. The agreed work program consists of the reprocessing of MOL’s 2D and 3D seismic data acquired in 2003, the drilling of an initial exploratory well and potential further wells depending on and justified by the results of the first well. The exploration targets reservoirs of around 150 mcm with fair geological probabilities.

The partnership is the first in a row of exploration partnerships that MOL plans to establish in the near future in the Central European area. MOL’s objectives with forming partnerships on certain projects within its exploration portfolio is to share exploration risks, as well as invite and capitalize on the special technical expertise of its selected partners.