--UPDATE, ADDS DETAILS OF NEW LICENCE BLOCKS--
IGas Energy (LON:IGAS) and Egdon Resources (LON:EDR) are among the first oil and gas firms to be offered new acreage in Britain as part of the government’s 28th licensing round.
The Oil & Gas Authority, the UK’s newly created regulator, today revealed that 27 new licence blocks have been offered to companies in the initial tranche of the round.
Precise details of the licence blocks have yet to be disclosed or analysed, and whilst the new blocks will include shale gas and fracking projects, others will be conventional oil and gas ventures.
Seven of those blocks have been offered to IGas, according to Oil & Gas UK documents, whereas Egdon has been offered operatorship of two others.
Egdon is also named as a partner of IGas on five blocks, alongside French major Total.
INEOS, which teamed up with IGas earlier this year, has been offered operatorship of three blocks, while another IGas partner GDF Suez was offered one block.
Cuadrilla has been offered two blocks, one of which as a partner of GDF Suez.
A further 132 blocks are potentially up for grabs; however, any awards will follow further detailed assessment. It is expected that those blocks could be offered to companies later this year.
IGas, in a stock exchange statement, confirmed the licence awards were for both conventional and shale projects.
"We are delighted with these new licence offers which further increases our oil and gas operations onshore in Britain and extends our acreage position in the strategically important Gainsborough Trough,” said Stephen Bowler, IGas’s chief executive.
“This licensing round is important in realising the significant opportunity to produce home-grown oil and gas and help secure Britain's energy needs for the future."
The offered blocks will not become ‘granted’ until a public consultation process - under Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations - has been completed, IGas said. That process has now officially begun, it added.
The new acreage blocks are located in the Gainsborough Trough, in the East Midlands, near the group’s existing operational areas.
IGas told investors it will be operator of the five joint venture blocks, owning 35%, whereas Total will have a 50% and Egdon will have 15%. It will, meanwhile, be the sole owner of two blocks.
Bowler said he is particularly pleased about the “strengthening relationship” between the joint venture partners.
The company confirmed that it has applied for other blocks that have yet to be offered.
Egdon separately acknowledged that the other acreage it has been offered is in the Widmerpool Basin, near Nottingham. In these two blocks Egdon will have an 18.75% stake alongside four other partners.
Privately owned Cuadrilla, which has been at the vanguard of fracking and shale gas operations thus far, confirmed it had been offered two blocks in Yorkshire – one in the South Cleveland Basin and one in the Gainsborough Trough.
Cuadrilla will have 70% of the partnership with GDF, which will have 30%, and this venture will be in the South Cleveland Basin, in North Yorkshire.
The fracking firm said the initial work for both project would be ‘desktop’ based, and it said it would communicate with the local community regularly and transparently about any proposed work and future operations.
“Whilst we continue to progress our shale gas exploration work in Lancashire, we welcome the potential for exploration in Yorkshire along with the associated benefits of new jobs and economic growth we believe it will bring,” said Cuadrilla chief executive Francis Egan.
“We have a responsibility to ensure people understand the facts and are not misled by harmful scaremongering.
“Onshore exploration and fracking can and will be done safely, securely and in an environmentally responsible way.”