Shares in Orcadian Energy PLC (AIM:ORCA, FRA:9J1), the North Sea oil and gas developer, rose 14% to 19.98p after it signed a joint development agreement with an American offshore data centre developer.
This would potentially advance its plan to turn two Southern North Sea gas fields into a power source for an offshore computing facility.
The non-exclusive agreement opens a 90-day window for due diligence, commercial validation and negotiation of a definitive energy-to-compute deal covering the Earlham and Orwell fields.
Neither side is committed to sign, finance or complete a transaction unless separate definitive agreements are executed, and either party can walk away on 10 business days' notice.
No money changed hands on signing, but the partner has an option to secure exclusivity for a fee that has yet to be agreed.
If exercised, exclusivity would run until 1 March 2027 and would bar Orcadian from granting competing rights over Earlham, Orwell or the wider P2680 licence, forcing it to end any rival talks with third parties.
The partner, which Orcadian has not named, describes itself as an integrated infrastructure owner and compute operator that develops offshore computing platforms, owns or finances the hardware and sells contracted capacity to customers.
The deal builds on Orcadian's Earlham Gigagrid concept, unveiled in July, under which gas from the two fields would fuel an offshore power station with integrated carbon capture, supplying roughly 200 megawatts of low-carbon electricity to a co-located data centre disconnected from the UK grid.
Earlham's gas has a high carbon dioxide content that makes conventional pipeline export unattractive, so generating power at the field and reinjecting the captured carbon dioxide underground is Orcadian's preferred route to monetising the resource.
The company puts combined 2C contingent resources, the mid-case estimate of recoverable gas from discovered but undeveloped fields, at 145 billion cubic feet as at 1 January 2026, split between 114 billion cubic feet at Earlham and 31 billion cubic feet at Orwell.
Those figures are internal estimates that have not been independently verified, and Orcadian intends to commission a competent person's report during the 90-day period.
The company will also evaluate a range of development scenarios to support the build-out of offshore compute capacity, and its directors believe the concept can deliver competitive power costs, subject to validation work.
Steve Brown, chief executive, said the company was delighted to be working with its new partner to design a scheme using the licence's gas resources to enable an offshore data centre of real scale in UK waters.
He added that the partner had developed a new approach to deploying compute offshore and would be a natural customer for the power the Earlham Gigagrid could generate.
Orcadian, which holds 100% of licence P2680, has set up a subsidiary, Earlham Gigagrid Ltd, to hold the project and attract third-party investment without diluting shareholders' interests in its other North Sea assets.
