Deltic notes three commercial gas prospects in North Sea licence

Deltic Energy plc has identified around 904 billion cubic feet (bcf) in the P50 estimate of potential gas resource over three targets in its Southern North Sea licence.

The hydrocarbon investment company is now looking for suitable partners to develop the prospects.

Deltic said that new data on Licence P2428, containing the Cupertino prospect, showed three commercially suitable geographical prospects.

The prospective resources range from some 205 BCF in the P90 estimate to 2.97 trillion cubic feet in the P10 estimate.

Chief executive Graham Swindells added that, following a detailed technical evaluation, the company’s technical team had uncovered more previously unrecognised prospectivity in the underexplored part of the basin. 

“With combined P50 recoverable gas resources in excess of 900 bcf or the equivalent to in excess of 150 million barrels of oil, these prospects are clearly material in terms of their overall scale both individually and collectively.

“In addition to our Selene and Pensacola prospects with Shell, these Cupertino stacked prospects, coupled with our recently re-acquired Cadence prospect, followed by our other recent licence awards, continue to deliver our stated strategy of developing a conveyor belt of exploration drilling opportunities of material scale. 

“Our attention will now turn to attracting the best possible partner to help us take these opportunities forward towards drilling.”

Deltic said the area was geologically complex and expected further SD seismic data would be needed to de-risk further the prospects before drilling.

The company was awarded Licence P2428 effective from 1 October 2018.

During 2019, Deltic reprocessed 852 line kilometres of vintage 2D data which has resulted in a “significant uplift in data quality.”

ASSETS

Deltic Energy has exploration interests in the Central and Southern North Sea and onshore Netherlands.

Recently farm-outs of Licences P2252 and P2437 to Shell UK, Deltic’s Pensacola and Selene prospects are scheduled to be drilled in 2021 and 2022.

Its other licences awarded in the 30th and 32nd Offshore Licensing Rounds include P2352 which contains the Dewar oil prospect, P2428 containing Cupertino, P2424 containing Cortez and the recently awarded block 43/11 containing Cadence.

The company was provisionally awarded six new licences covering approximately 2,155.5 km² in the Oil and Gas Authority’s recent 32nd Licensing Round.

All the new licences are awarded to Deltic on a 100% equity basis with the exception of one which has been jointly awarded with Shell holding a 70% working interest.