Europa Oil & Gas has identified two prospects which could contain up to 553 MMboe in Ireland's South Porcupine Basin.
According to a competent person’s report by ERC Equipoise including, two pre-rift prospects, Ervine and Edgeworth, contain and estimated gross mean un-risked prospective resources of 553 MMboe.
Europa CEO Hugh Mackay says the evaluated takes the firm's mean audited Prospective Resources in South Porcupine Basin to more than 2 billion boe. Furthermore, he said: "We believe that Atlantic Ireland is about to enter a phase of exploration drilling, starting this summer."
The prospects, which Europa says are in an area potentially analogous to the Brent Province in the North Sea, are in Licensing Option 16/2, and take Europa's total aggregated gross mean un-risked prospective resources across its seven Irish Atlantic Margin licenses to 4.7 billion boe and 1.5 Tcf of gas.
Edgeworth was estimated to contain 251 MMboe and Ervine 302 MMboe. Europa says both are above the 200 MMboe threshold it thinks is the minimum economic field size.
Including an adjoining license, Frontier Exploration License 3/13, there could be more than 2 billion boe of gross mean un-risked prospective resources across five prospects: Wilde, Beckett and Shaw in FEL 3/13 and Edgeworth and Ervine in LO 16/2, according to ERC.
Europa has also identified a third prospect in LO 16/2. It says the next steps involve reprocessing the existing 3D seismic to deliver a pre-stack depth migration product to de-risk all three LO 16/2 prospects and potentially upgrade them to drillable status.
Europa CEO Hugh Mackay says: “This CPR for LO 16/2 has delivered audited Prospective Resources of 553 million boe for two new pre-rift prospects Edgeworth and Ervine in the emerging pre-rift play in the South Porcupine Basin. Combined with our existing CPR for the Cretaceous fan prospects in FEL 3/13 this brings the sum of our mean audited Prospective Resources in the basin to over 2 billion boe.
“Our target for future work on these prospects in LO 16/2 is to undertake a program 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 program underway. This is an exciting time for Europa and I look forward to updating the market on our progress.”