Europa Oil & Gas PLC (LON:EOG) provided insights on the potential of its Atlantic licenses as it updated on the status of farm-out negotiations with a “number of parties” interested in partnering with the group.
It has been in talks with a division of a major oil company interested in its offshore Ireland areas FEL 4/19, FEL 1/17 and FEL 3/13.
While those talks have been ongoing for more than a year, Europa has been in contact with other potential collaborators.
“We will report any material developments in relation to these discussions when finalised,” investors were told in an update.
The focus currently is “on being in a position to drill the Inishkea prospect at the earliest opportunity”, Europa added.
As such, it hopes to have permission for a site survey by next summer to allow work to begin in 2021.
A presentation to the Atlantic Ireland conference taking place in Dublin Tuesday and Wednesday (October 29-30) has highlighted the significant potential of Europa’s licence positions in the highly prospective Porcupine Basin.
While just four wells have been drilled (in the south of the area), oil, gas and condensate have been production-tested and both source and reservoir are proven, Europa pointed out, suggesting it is more than a frontier opportunity.
That said, the commercial threshold for a discovery would be 200mln barrels producing 5,000 barrels of oil equivalent per well per day.
“Europa's east flank prospects in FEL 1/17 and 3/13 have the potential to meet these criteria,” the company added.
Exploration of this sort of offshore acreage might be tough, but recent deepwater drilling in the south had been “excellent”, it pointed out.
Finally, the technology such as floating production facilities have been shown to work in similar conditions in the seas off the UK and Norway.