TIRANA (Reuters) - A venture between Royal Dutch Shell
The official said three bids had been submitted for the blocks - from Shell Upstream Albania B.V with Petromanas Albania GmbH, Israel's Delek Group Limited (>> Delek Group Ltd.) and Interland Investments SA.
The National Resources Agency has forwarded the bids to the Energy Ministry, which will pick a winner and instruct the agency to start negotiations.
Shell's bid signals renewed interest in Albania, a NATO nation seeking to join the European Union, after many oil majors failed to strike oil there in the decade after it toppled communism in 1990.
The Shell-Petromanas venture in Albania is now drilling two wells to size up the output potential after very promising initial results at their Shpirag well, half a mile from the spot where Occidental found very little oil in 2001 and quit.
(Reporting by Benet Koleka; editing by Zoran Radosavljevic and Jason Neely)