British explorer Desire Petroleum said yesterday it looked forward to resuming drilling off the Falklands in the third quarter.
Chairman Stephen Phipps said: “We remain upbeat about the resource potential in the North Falkland Basin.”
He added that the company would decide where to drill on its acreage following further detailed analysis of data from its recent Liz exploration well – the first to be drilled in Falkland waters for 12 years. Results are expected within two months.
Liz (Desire 92.5% and Rockhopper 7.5%) was the first well to be drilled in a multi-well campaign by Desire, Rockhopper and BHP Billiton in the south Atlantic. It has been plugged and abandoned as a gas find after disappointing initial results.
Diamond Offshore UK’s Ocean Guardian rig, which drilled Liz prospect, has now moved to drill Rockhopper’s Sea Lion and Ernest prospects in the North Falkland Basin. It will then drill the Toroa prospect for BHP Billiton in the East Falkland Basin before returning to Desire.
Desire, which raised £60million last year for its drilling campaign, said it had cash in hand of £57million.
In conjunction with its fundraising, Aberdeen-based Senergy (GB) was commissioned to evaluate the Desire’s top 10 prospects: Liz, Ann, Alpha, Dawn, Jacinta, Beth, Ninky, Rachel, Helen and Pam. Key conclusions were that net to Desire, prospective recoverable resources in those 10 prospects were above 3billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) with sizes ranging from 122million boe (Ninky) to 1.63billion boe recoverable (Alpha).
Desire, which has no income from production so far, reported pre-tax losses for 2009 of £2.45million, compared with a £1.15million deficit the year before.