The Stena IceMAX deepwater drillship has spudded a well that will target the Druid and Drombeg prospects, offshore Ireland.
The well, operated by Ireland-based Providence Resources, is in Frontier Exploration License (FEL) 2/14 in the southern Porcupine Basin.
Druid is a Paleocene prospect and Drombeg a Lower Cretaceous prospect. The two are vertically stacked and are some 220km off the southwest coast of Ireland, at about 2250m water depth..
A further operational update will be provided once the Paleocene Druid prospect has been penetrated or as appropriate. Drilling is then planned to continue to the underlying Lower Cretaceous Drombeg prospect.
The license also contains the Diablo prospect.
According to Providence, multi-domain analysis with oil services giant Schlumberger confirms that 3D seismic responses from the Druid and Drombeg prospects are consistent with the presence of two large vertically stacked stratigraphically trapped oil accumulations. Total cumulative of un-risked prospective (Pmean) resources are at about 5.095 billion bbl, with Druid holding 3.18 billion bbl, and Drombeg at 1.915 billion bbl.