Irish oil & gas company Providence Resources has described its Avalon prospect off Ireland as ‘significant’ following a technical report for Licensing Option 16/27.
The LO 16/27 is located in the central Porcupine Basin and is currently operated by Providence.
Total farmed into the license in June but the change in ownership will become effective after receiving consent from the Minister of State at the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment.
Upon receiving the consent, the LO 16/27 joint-venture will consist of Total as the operator holding 50 percent of interest, Providence with 40, and Sosina Exploration Limited holding the remaining 10 percent.
Providence said on Monday that it recently provided the Petroleum Affairs Division of the Irish Government’s Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment with its End of Year 1 LO 16/27 Technical Report which was focused on the hydrocarbon potential of the Avalon prospect, on behalf of the JV partners.
According to the company, a large scale calibrated petroleum systems model over an area of 48,000 square kilometers, which included the LO 16/27 area, supports the potential of a working petroleum system in the license.
It demonstrates that the Avalon prospect could potentially access a total hydrocarbon resource charge of 8.67 bbo and 12 bboe, Providence stated.
In the Monday statement, the company also said: “Whilst petroleum systems modeling in emerging frontier basins have inherently high degrees of uncertainty, the results of this study are directionally very positive for the potential charging of the Avalon prospect.”
“Further positive outputs from the PSM indicate that the risk of oil biodegradation in the Avalon prospect is low to moderate based on the modeled temporal variations in reservoir temperature. Also, top seal integrity for the Avalon prospect was also assessed using inputs from both the PSM and a parallel basin-wide geomechanical modeling study. This work has positively demonstrated that there is a very low likelihood of a mechanically breached seal at Avalon based on modeled pore pressures,” said Providence.
John O’Sullivan , technical director of Providence, said: “The work completed during the first year of Licensing Option 16/27 confirmed our view as to the significant hydrocarbon resource potential of the Avalon prospect.
“While the nearby 53/6-A well program is currently assessing the similar-aged Druid stratigraphic prospect, as well as the deeper lower cretaceous Drombeg prospect, Avalon is somewhat differentiated insofar as it demonstrates a potentially different trapping mechanism with structural closure mapped in the proximal sediment transport direction. The proximity of Avalon to the deeper breached Dunquin North oil accumulation is also a potential positive in terms of hydrocarbon sourcing.
“We look forward to working with our JV partners to mature the Avalon prospect to drillable status.”
To remind, just last week Providence started drilling operations in the Frontier Exploration Licence (FEL) 2/14, which contains the Paleocene “Druid”, Lower Cretaceous “Drombeg” and pre-Cretaceous “Diablo” prospects.