Lansdowne share price jumps 15% on sale reaction

Irish exploration firm Lansdowne Oil & Gas saw its share price jump by nearly 15% yesterday on the back of it attracting a development partner for its Celtic Sea assets.

The AIM-listed firm, which is a junior partner at the highly-rated Barryroe field off the Cork coast, has sold an 80% interest in its Midleton/East Kinsale gas prospect to Kinsale Energy; a subsidiary of Malaysian group Petronas.

Under the terms of the deal, Kinsale will take over 80% ownership of the gas prospect in return for covering Lansdowne’s share of the cost of any drilling and well-testing programme up to $2.5m (€2m), with Lansdowne having a free carry.

“Securing a farm-in partner for Midleton is a critical first step to delivering our objective of a multi-well programme in the Celtic Sea which, in addition to exploration wells, we expect to also include further appraisal/pre-development drilling on the Barryroe oil field,” said Lansdowne’s chief executive Steve Boldy yesterday, adding that the company now looked forward to drilling.

The Midleton prospect lies around 20km north-east of the Kinsale Head gas field — which contains about 1.7 trillion cubic feet of gas; and 20km east of the Ballycotton gas field which contains around 60 billion cubic feet of gas.

Lansdowne’s London-based share price was up by 14.94%, yesterday, at 12.5p.