Europa Oil and Gas (LON: EOG) is looking for a farm-in partner to help prepare its Padraig Basin licence for drilling.
The AIM-listed exploration and production company said Licence Option 16/22 had gross unrisked resources of 300-600million barrels of oil equivalent.
The licence, which was awarded to Europa earlier this year, lies on the eastern margin of the Rockall basin, 300km west of the Irish coast.
It contains a number of exploration leads in water depths of 800-2,000m.
A spokesperson for Europa said the location offered some “logistical challenges”, but that they should be no more difficult to overcome than those on the western flank of the South Porcupine basin, where substantial exploration activity is already taking place.
A number of 2-D seismic surveys are available over the licence, the most notable of which were shot for Phillips Petroleum in 1998.
Europa wants a farm-in partner with which to reprocess the data and to develop the prospect.
Europa chief executive Hugh Mackay said: “Whilst the Padraig Basin play is currently at an early exploration stage and at the higher risk end of the exploration spectrum, we have a work programme to de-risk this evolving play.
“In particular we are hopeful that successful reprocessing of historic 2-D seismic might allow us to mature existing leads to drillable prospect status at comparatively low cost and without the necessity to acquire new seismic data.”