Highlights
Orcadian Energy is delighted to report that NSTA has announced the offer of a further tranche of licence awards in the 33rd Round.
NSTA has confirmed, in an announcement dated 31 January 2024, that Orcadian Energy will be offered two licences in the Central North Sea ("CNS") one in partnership with Parkmead Group, and the other in partnership with Triangle Energy. Orcadian anticipates that these licences will be formally issued within the next three months.
Mid-North Sea High Licence
The Mid-North Sea High ("MNSH") licence contains shallow gas prospects and leads which contain up to 336 bcf of gross prospective recoverable resource on a P50 basis, this estimate is an Orcadian management estimate, which is provided for guidance only, and was submitted in the licence application. The two largest prospects - Glenlough and Breckagh - are estimated to account for about 80% of the identified resource potential. Orcadian applied in partnership with Triangle Energy, an Australian listed energy company. Orcadian would be licence administrator and would hold 50% of the offered licence.
The Mid-North Sea licence covers blocks 29/16, 29/17, 29/18, 29/19, 29/21, 29/22, 29/23, 29/27 and 29/28.
Fynn Licence
The Fynn licence contains a very substantial heavy oil discovery which has a gross P50 contingent recoverable resource of 292 MMbbl, based upon the latest internal estimates as presented to NSTA by Parkmead (E&P) Limited, the proposed operator. About 88% of the resource on a best technical case is estimated to lie within the area of the offered licence.
Orcadian has been offered a 50% working interest in the Fynn licence to be operated by the Parkmead Group. The Fynn licence covers blocks 14/15a, 14/20d and 15/11a.
As announced on 19 January 2023, the Company made three licence applications, two of which are described above. The third area applied for, which was in the Southern North Sea, has not been offered for award in this tranche but it is anticipated it will be considered in a future tranche, and further announcements will be made as appropriate.
Resource Update
As a result of the above licence awards and based upon the assumption that the planned disposal of an 81.25% interest in P2244 completes before 31 March 2024, Orcadian management's latest view of the Company's resources is set out below.
Resource estimates comprise the current Sproule CPR for Pilot, Elke, Narwhal and the Elke satellites; and for the remainder the estimates are management or operator estimates as submitted to NSTA in the licence applications. Prospective resources are only included for the high-graded leads and prospects: Clover, Breckagh, Glenlough and QI (quantitative interpretation) geophysically supported Elke satellites.
Steve Brown, Orcadian's CEO, said:
"We are delighted that NSTA has announced these offers of licence awards. Our strategy has been to licence or acquire discoveries and compelling prospects, and then to farm-out an interest in the licence to finance exploration drilling or, best of all, development. We will build upon that strategy which has been validated by the signing of a sale and purchase agreement for the Pilot field with Ping Petroleum, a deal which we are on track to complete by the end of March 2024*.
"We are excited to work with our partners Parkmead and Triangle. With Parkmead, our focus will be on designing a work programme to unlock the potentially very significant resource base in Fynn; and with Triangle we will be working to transform the leads on the Mid North Sea High licence into prospects which can be drilled, likely at a relatively low cost as the gas prospects are so shallow."
* completion is subject to satisfaction of the conditions precedent set out in the announcement dated 7 December 2023