Europa Oil and Gas (AIM: EOG) and i3 Energy (AIM: i3e) are considering plans to pick up the Tain North Sea discovery given up by Repsol earlier this year.
Speaking to an industry event this month, Europa CEO Will Holland said the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) indicated the pair could make an out-of-round bid for the Moray Firth oil find.
It comes as i3 Energy and Europa had been seeking to join up their nearby Serenity discovery with Tain via Repsol’s Bleo Holm FPSO.
However, those plans were seemingly dashed when Repsol and its partners gave up on the Tain project.
They said in October the project was no longer attractive.
That was the latest in a run of bad fortune for Serenity – once hoped to be a 100 million-barrel “company maker”, hydrocarbons were “not present” at an appraisal well drilled last year.
Europa and i3 maintain a discovery is still there to be salvaged, even with Repsol and its partner Viaro exiting.
Mr Holland said: “There are a number of options we can do. There is a discovery adjacent to Serenity called Tain, which is an open block.
“The NSTA have indicated that we could apply for that in an out-of-round application, so we’re analysing that with our partners i3 at the moment and we’re looking at ways to develop this, and there are a number of options.”
‘It was unfortunate it didn’t work, but it was a calculated risk’
Mr Holland faced questions from “long-suffering shateholders” who said they weren’t surprised the presentation didn’t include a share price graphic.
In response, he said: “With regard to the share price, if you go back to pre-Serenity, and you look at what happened when the Serenity deal was done, the share price went from 1.8pence up to 3p. We drilled the well and it went up to 3.5p and then it came down to 1.5p.
“That’s typical of what happens when you drill a high-impact appraisal well.
“If Serenity worked, we’d have discovered 70m barrels of crude and our share price would have been significantly higher. We’re in the oil and gas game and we have to take risks.
“We have to take subsurface risks, that’s the nature of the game.
“It was unfortunate it didn’t work, but it was a calculated risk. We, along with i3, thought it was a very good opportunity. A lot of investors thought it was a good opportunity, because they invested in it as well, and it didn’t work. It’s the nature of the game.”
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