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Relinquishment of Irish Licensing Option 16/19
Relinquishment of Irish Licensing Option 16/19.
About this update from Europa Oil & Gas (holdings) Plc
[{"type":"text","content":"\n \n Europa Oil & Gas (Holdings) plc / Index: AIM / Epic: EOG / Sector: Oil & Gas\n\n05 February 2020\n\nEuropa Oil & Gas (Holdings) plc (‘Europa’ or ‘the Company’)\n\nRelinquishment of Irish Licensing Option 16/19\n\nEuropa Oil & Gas (Holdings) plc, the UK, Ireland and Morocco focused exploration, development and production company, announces that it has elected to relinquish its interest in Licensing Option (‘LO’) 16/19 in the South Porcupine Basin, offshore Ireland. This follows the completion of the agreed work programme, including a full technical assessment, which concluded that the prospectivity of LO 16/19 is limited. Delivery of all reporting requirements and relinquishment of LO 16/19 was confirmed by the Petroleum Affairs Division of the Department of Communications, Climate Action & Environment (‘PAD’) on 3 February 2020. The relinquishment has negligible impact on the value of Europa’s portfolio. \n\nAfter farming out a 70% interest in LO 16/19 to a subsidiary of Cairn Energy plc (‘Cairn’) in March 2017, Europa retained a 30% interest in the Licensing Option. As part of the terms of the farm-out, Cairn funded a seismic acquisition programme which was completed in 2018. As a result, Europa’s accounting carrying cost for LO 16/19 was limited to £94,000, which will be written off in the current period. The Company estimates that relinquishment will result in the avoidance of full year costs of £105,000, based on Europa assuming 100% ownership and converting the LO into a Frontier Exploration Licence (‘FEL’).\n\nFollowing the relinquishment of LO 16/19, Europa’s licence position offshore Ireland comprises five 100%-owned licences. Multiple targets have been identified on seismic data across the licences. Combined, these have the potential to host gross mean un-risked prospective resources of 5.7 billion barrels oil equivalent in addition to the 1.5 tcf gas assigned to Europa’s flagship Inishkea prospect on FEL 4/19 in the Slyne Basin. Inishkea, which lies close to the 1tcf producing Corrib gas field and associated infrastructure, has an estimated geological chance of success of one in three and is viewed as “infrastructure-led†exploration.\n\nSimon Oddie, Interim Chief Executive Officer and Executive Cha...