UK’s Oil and Gas Authority has extended UK Oil & Gas Investments’ (UKOG) P1916 license offshore Isle of Wight in the Wessex-Weald Basin.
UKOG said on Thursday that it was granted a one-year extension to the initial term of the company’s offshore P1916 license to January 31, 2018.
The license had already been extended in June 2015 when the initial period of the exploration stage was extended to January 31, 2017.
Also, the company signed an Asset Transfer Agreement in June 2016 for the 22.5 percent interest in the license with Magellan Petroleum which took UKOG’s interest in the license to 100 percent.
The 46.7 square kilometer license contains an undrilled Portland limestone conventional oil prospect, which is a look-alike to the nearby Arreton Portland oil discovery, located in the company’s adjacent PEDL331 onshore license. A deeper Triassic sandstone prospect lies directly beneath the Portland target in P1916.
UKOG added that the company planned to submit a planning application to drill one or more prospects in the Isle of Wight during the coming year.
Stephen Sanderson , UKOG’s Executive Chairman, said: “UKOG’s future planned Isle of Wight operations are aimed solely at the extraction of oil from conventional naturally-fractured limestone and sandstone reservoirs, not shale, and therefore will not utilize massive hydraulic fracturing.”