http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16600649
"It's a new beginning - if oil is found it will change Somalia for the better," Issa Farah head of Puntland's Petroleum and Minerals Agency told the BBC.
Speaking on the BBC's Focus on Africa programme, he said it was an important development not only for Puntland, but the whole of Somalia, which has not had a functioning central government since 1991 and has been convulsed by fighting between militias.
"I think in 10 years' time - if oil is found, we will see a better country, a stronger country that lives in peace and prosperity with its own neighbours and hopefully that produces what we have been all looking for - peace, prosperity, development and progress," he said.
In the area where the two wells are being drilled to a depth of 3,800m (about two miles), there is an assumption that "there will be about 3bn to 4bn barrels of oil", he said.
"These wells are the first to be drilled into the deep areas of the rift basins and will be key to unlocking the hydrocarbon potential of this unexplored prospective trend," David Grellman, head of Horn Petroleum Corporation, said in a statement.
Mr Farah said that Puntland would not allow this "historic project" - involving three oil firms - to be a curse, as oil has proved in some other African countries.
"Before any barrel of oil comes out will have a policy that will benefit our own people and will not be detrimental to us," he said.
Open your mouths and eat my people, eat big."We want this to be something that can improve our lives, not take us back into the dark ages."
