Last week Parliament voted in favour of allowing Fracking under National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), licenses and in the same week approved licences for drilling oil and gas on the Isle of Wight.
As reported in March 2015, UK Oil & Gas Investments PLC (UKOG), believe there are over 100 million barrels of oil available for drilling on and just-off the Isle of Wight.
Oil under Arreton
As part of the government’s 14th onshore oil licence round, UKOG were awarded a licence to explore for oil in a 200 sq km area on the Isle of Wight. Holding 30% of the licence, as part of a consortium, is Solo Oil.
The consortium are interested in drilling the Arreton-2 well, which was previously drilled by British Gas in the 1970s.
Planning applications
UKOG say they will “continue discussions” with the Isle of Wight council and the necessary planning applications are expected to be submitted in 2016.
Paperwork reveals plans to acquire “additional seismic coverage to further define the Arreton discovery and look-alike prospects”.
The Arreton well sits immediately next to a brownfield site and UKOG say, can be developed with “sensitivity to the surrounding locality”.
Excited by potential of Arreton project
Stephen Sanderson, UKOG’s Executive Chairman commented:
“The Licence adds significantly to the Company’s conventional and tight oil acreage portfolio in the UK and presents UKOG with a key combination of near-term low-risk appraisal and development balanced by high potential conventional and tight oil exploration upside.
“Whilst the upside exploration potential of the M Prospect [just off the coast of Compton] and tight oil is attractive for the future, we are also excited by the near-term cash generative potential of the Arreton appraisal project.
“We are also pleased to extend our pioneering Weald tight oil focus into the similar geology of the Isle of Wight where our planned wells will provide key data to help further the technical and commercial proof of concept.”
More detail on the 14th round of licences can be found on the UK Government’s Website.
Thanks to all the readers who got in touch about this.
Image: © UKOG and UK Gov
