Kosmos Energy the latest international firm to focus on Ireland’s oil and gas
Dallas-based Kosmos — already a partner with Tullow Oil in Ghana and with Fastnet Oil & Gas in Morocco — has signed up to take a 75% stake of a licensing block owned by Canadian explorer Antrim Energy, in return for funding a 3D seismic study on the prospect.
Additionally, Kosmos is acquiring an 85% holding in the two Porcupine Basin licensing options currently owned by London-based company Europa Oil & Gas. Under this agreement, Kosmos will fully fund a planned 3D seismic programme and reimburse Europa for a portion of its previously-incurred exploration costs. The US firm will also cover 100% of the costs of first exploration on each of the Europa blocks.
While still subject to Government approval, Kosmos will move to convert the licensing options to frontier exploration licences, once that approval has been granted.
Europa recently confirmed that it had held talks regarding the farming-out of its Irish assets; previous testing of which have shown a 90% probability of 66 million barrels of oil and a 10% probability of one billion barrels at one of the options and potentially bigger estimates at the other.
Europa has said that its current prospects, in the Porcupine Basin, have a mean total resource potential of around two billion barrels of oil.
“The attractiveness to the larger players should be that the Porcupine Basin is potentially not just a one prospect wonder, but a new play extending into open acreage,” Europa Oil & Gas chief Hugh Mackay said.
Kosmos’s chief geoscientist, Paul Dailly, added that: “The addition of these highly-prospective blocks offshore Ireland represents further opportunity to leverage our understanding of Cretaceous-age combination structural-stratigraphic plays in overlooked and underexplored basins.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
