Company hopes to strike oil off Kerry

After striking it rich off the Cork coast, exploration company Providence and its prospecting partners have lined up a specialist rig to try to find oil in difficult, deep waters 200km off the Kerry coast.

The company announced that its drilling syndicate had agreed to sign a contract to bring a deep-sea rig to the Dunquin field off the south-west coast in early 2013.

The water at Dunquin is a mile deep and, unlike the find at Barryroe off the Cork coast, there have been no major finds in the area to build expectations.