Gulfsands Petroleum, which has headquarters in London, said Monday it planned to spend $3.5 million to develop newly-acquired acreage in northern Morocco.

Gulfsands said it will serve as the operator in the Moulay Bouchta license area alongside a Moroccan state entity.

The company said the area is thought to hold significant deposits of oil and gas. Gulfsands said Moulay Bouchta is near the Haricha field, which produced a total 2.8 billion barrels of oil and 4.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas before operations ceased in 1990.

Gulfsands said it would spend about $3.5 million on initial field development.

"We view this license area as prospective for oil and an important and complementary addition to our already extensive onshore portfolio," Mahdi Sajjad, the company's chief executive officer, said in a statement.

West African nations have drawn interest from international energy companies eager to tap into unexploited reserves.