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Elaine Reynolds
6 June 2018

Major resource upgrade for Europa in the Porcupine Basin

Europa Oil & Gas has almost doubled its prospective resource estimate in its FEL 3/13 licence in the Porcupine Basin offshore Ireland. The completion of pre-stack depth migration (PSDM) reprocessing of 3D seismic data originally acquired in 2013 has led to an estimated combined gross mean un-risked prospective resources on the licence of 2.9 bnboe, up from the 2016 estimate of just under 1.5 bnboe. The increased understanding of the Beckett, Shaw and Wilde prospects will provide a fuller picture to potential partners that Europa will be hoping to attract when it launches a farm out process for FEL 3/13 after providing similar updates on its other Porcupine licences, FEL 2/13 and FEL 1/17.

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Elaine Reynolds
7 November 2017

Tullow’s Araku result completes our 2017 wells to watch list

At the start of this year, we highlighted seven exploration wells due to be drilled in 2017, all involving independent companies and targeting resources over 100mmboe. The results from the last of these wells, Tullow’s Araku, were announced last week, with the offshore Suriname well proving the presence of gas condensate but with no significant reservoir quality rocks.

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Elaine Reynolds
12 September 2017

Drombeg adds to Druid disappointment

The Druid/Drombeg frontier exploration well, 53/6-1, is currently being plugged and abandoned after encountering porous water bearing reservoir across both target intervals. Operator Providence Resources announced the results from the deeper Drombeg target this week, following on from similarly disappointing results from Druid in August.

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Elaine Reynolds
7 June 2017

Porcupine Basin attracts Total

Total is the latest major oil company to move into the Porcupine Basin offshore Ireland, a region that has been generating interest across the industry. It has entered into two separate agreements with Providence Resources and Sosina Exploration that will give it the option to farm into Frontier Exploration Licence FEL 2/14 as well as securing a 50% WI and operatorship of Licensing Option 16/27. FEL 2/14 is the location of the upcoming 53/6-A Druid/Drombeg well which is due to spud at the end of this month and was highlighted in our ‘Wells to watch 2017’ report. Click here for report  LO 16/27 is to the north of Druid/Drombeg and contains the Avalon prospect.Providence has also agreed an option to farm out a further 20% of LO 16/27 to Cairn.

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Elaine Reynolds
19 July 2016

Porcupine Basin Phase 2


The Porcupine Basin is an exploration hotspot, driven both by the interest in Jurassic plays similar to those found in the analogous Flemish Pass basin offshore Canada and in Cretaceous stratigraphic prospects similar to those encountered offshore West Africa. As such, the 2015 Atlantic Margin licencing round has been the most successful to date, with a record number of 43 applications from 17 companies. With Phase 2 of these awards announced in June 2016, we are providing an update to our Exploration Watch on the Porcupine basin published in April 2016. For a more detailed introduction to the basin, please refer to our original note.

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