Irish oil and gas exploration company Providence Resources has sold its UK onshore assets for $66m (€50m) to IGas Energy.

Oil production at the one-billion-barrel Barryroe oil field off the Cork coast could commence within the next “two to three years” according to Tony O’Reilly, chief executive of the field’s owners Providence Resources.

MEEHAN DRILLING, the Irish-owned onshore drilling company, has entered into a heads of agreement to create a 10-year commercial joint venture with IGas Energy, a leading developer of unconventional gas resources in Britain, to drill onshore for coal bed methane.