Europa Oil & Gas (Holdings) Plc (LON:EOG) has detailed two additional new exploration prospects offshore Ireland that are estimated to have potential for 553mln barrels of oil.
A new competent persons report (CPR), provided by ERC Equipoise, has confirmed two significant prospects – Ervine and Edgeworth – in the company’s wholly owned Licence Option (LO) 16/2 in the South Porcupine basin, in Ireland’s Atlantic Margin.
Edgeworth is estimated to have the potential for 251mln barrels, whereas Ervine could host some 302mln barrels.
WATCH: Europa O&G's boss hails CPR firming up two large Offshore Ireland prospects
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The LO 16/2 area adjoins the company’s Frontier Exploration Licence 3/13 where ERC Equipoise has previously estimated around 1.5bn barrels resource potential across three exploration prospects.
In total, Europa’s portfolio of seven exploration areas offshore Ireland now has an estimated 4.7bn of oil resource potential as well as 1.5 trillion cubic feet of gas potential.
Europa highlighted that the next phase of work for these assets will see the LO 16/2 prospects de-risked by a reprocessing of existing 3D seismic data.
At the same time, the company is continuing a farm-out process to bring in a partner to take the project’s forward the drilling of exploration wells.
First though, third party exploration drilling programmes are slated for summer 2017.
Hugh Mackay, Europa chief executive, said: “We believe that Atlantic Ireland is about to enter a phase of exploration drilling starting this summer.
“Portfolio diversity should enable us to profit from the read across from other companies success, whichever play it comes from.
“Our target for future work on these prospects in LO 16/2 is to undertake a programme of 3D reprocessing to further de-risk the prospects and mature them to drillable prospect status.
“In parallel with this we have an active farm-out programme underway for our industry leading licence position offshore Atlantic Ireland which includes LO 16/2.
“This is an exciting time for Europa and I look forward to updating the market on our progress.”