Europa Oil & Gas (Holdings) Plc (LON:EOG) has extended the first exploration phase for some of its key licences off Ireland’s west coast.
Phase one of Frontier Exploration Licences 2/13 and 3/13 has been extended by a year, and now ends on July 4 2017.
The exploration company told investors that extension allows it to mature existing prospects and perform detailed mapping of all potential prospective levels on both licences, whilst at the same time seek partners for the next phase of work.
Europa has already outlined prospects containing some 1.5bn barrels of oil equivalent in these exploration areas. Meanwhile, recently added Licensing Option 16/2, which adjoins FEL 3/13, is seen to host prospects with around 900mln barrels of resource potential.
Exploration targets in this area have been partially de-risked by successes in other similar areas in the Atlantic Margin, and the exploration concept has been further validated by the influx of major oil and gas firms via a recent government licensing round.
Hugh Mackay, Europa chief executive, said: “Recent discoveries offshore Newfoundland and Senegal, backed up by our own technical analysis of our proprietary 3D seismic, demonstrate the clear potential for both FEL 2/13 and 3/13 to hold new exploration plays and new exploration prospects.
“Thanks to this 12 month extension, we can now investigate these further, with the aim of securing a farm out partner for drilling.”
In particular Mackay highlighted what he described as “clearly high potential’ of the Cretaceous plays in the area.
“We believe there is scope to further enhance this potential with additional plays in the Syn-rift, Pre-rift and Tertiary.
“Whilst we hope that all of these plays are proved successful in the South Porcupine basin by drilling, at this early stage in the exploration of a frontier basin, it is beneficial to have a diversity of plays in our portfolio.”