Europa Oil and Gas said today that two of its prospects off Ireland contain prospective resources of more than 500million barrels of oil.
Europa said ERC Equipoise had assigned gross mean un-risked prospective resources of 251million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) to Edgeworth and 302million boe to Ervine.
Both prospects are in Licensing Option 16/2 in the South Porcupine Basin off the south-west of Ireland.
Europa, which has a 100% interest in LO 16/2, said both plays wre above the 200million boe threshold it considers to be the minimum economic field size.
Europa chief executive Hugh Mackay said: “The potential resources on these two licences are very large and diversified in terms of play type.
“We believe that Atlantic Ireland is about to enter a phase of exploration drilling starting this summer. Portfolio diversity should enable us to profit from the read across from other companies’ success, whichever play it comes from.
“Our target for future work on these prospects in LO 16/2 is to undertake a programme of 3D reprocessing to further de-risk the prospects and mature them to drillable prospect status.
“In parallel with this we have an active farm-out programme underway for our industry leading licence position offshore Atlantic Ireland which includes LO 16/2.”