Offshore Ireland focused Europa Oil & Gas has had its Phase 1 Frontier Exploration Licences (FEL) 2/13 and 3/13 in the South Porcupine Basin extended by one year to 4 July 2017.
The extension will allow Europa to mature existing prospects and perform detailed mapping of all potential prospective levels on both licences, including the Pre-Rift, Syn-Rift and Tertiary plays, whilst it continues to seek a farm out partner for drilling.
Based on 2500sq km of proprietary 3D seismic data, which was acquired in 2013, Europa has mapped gross mean un-risked prospective resources of about 1.5 billion boe in FEL 3/13 in three early Cretaceous submarine fan prospects and 595 MMboe in FEL 2/13 in early Cretaceous turbidite channel prospects.
The reservoirs are analogous to the Cretaceous play in the equatorial Atlantic Margin province, which has delivered the Jubilee and Mahogany oil fields, says Europa.
The extension will also enable the company to undertake further technical analysis and mapping of potential Pre-rift and early Post-rift plays, and also generate regional paleo-geographic models for the Pre-Rift, Syn-Rift and Tertiary that will enable reservoir development and reservoir quality to be predicted, it says.
Europa CEO Hugh Mackay 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, in addition to the Cretaceous play that we have already identified.
"Thanks to this 12 month extension, we can now investigate these further, with the aim of securing a farm out partner for drilling. Having already mapped combined gross mean un-risked prospective resources of over 2 billion boe on our 100% owned FELs 2/13 and 3/13, the Cretaceous play clearly has high exploration potential.
"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.”
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