RABAT, Feb. 7 (Xinhua) -- The Moroccan authorities said on Wednesday that the country signed an agreement with oil giants Royal Dutch Shell and 's Repsol to conduct onshore oil and gas explorations in southern Morocco.

The explorations will be carried out at an onshore site in the southern region of Souss-Massa, which covers an area of 9,990 square km, Morocco's National Office for Hydrocarbons and Mining (ONHYM) said in a statement.

Repsol, one of the world's leading publicly-traded oil and gas companies, will be the operator of the project, the statement noted.

Figures show a total of 164 million U.S. dollars is expected to be invested in oil and gas explorations in Morocco in 2018.

Between 2000 and 2017, Morocco's total investments in oil and gas explorations onshore and offshore totalled 2.7 billion dollars, 96 percent of which was paid by partners of state-owned ONHYM.