Predator Oil & Gas Holdings has been awarded a one-year extension of Licensing Option (LO) 16/30 offshore Ireland.
Predator said on Wednesday that the LO would be extended to November 30, 2019, subject to carrying out the work program agreed with the Department of Communications, Climate Action, and Environment.
The company said that a decision to proceed to an application for an exploration license would be made 60 days before the end of the licensing option or sooner.
LO 16/30 was awarded to Predator in June 2016 as part of the 2015 Atlantic Margin Licensing Round. It is operated by Predator Oil and Gas Ventures with a 50% stake, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Predator. The partner of in the LO is Theseus which holds the remaining 50%.
As for the work program, it includes the purchase and reprocessing of existing 2D seismic data and ongoing desktop studies focused on re-evaluating the Marathon 49/19-1 gas discovery made in 1984 on the Ram Head prospect.
Ram Head could be ‘game changer’
Also, an updated competent person’s report (CPR) was commissioned to incorporate the company’s most recent independent reservoir engineering studies as well as development options based on landing gas at the current Inch landfall for Kinsale gas in County Cork and gas market assessment.
The previous CPR from 2018 gave best estimate and high estimate prospective gas resources net to the company of 508 and 1,370 bcf respectively
The updated CPR will represent the first such independent analysis of the development potential of the Ram Head gas structure based on a ten vertical well development concept which forecasts gas recovery of over 1 tcf of gross gas in 11 years from production start-up.
Paul Griffiths , chief executive of Predator, said: “We consider the 49/19-1 gas discovery to potentially represent the largest undeveloped gas discovery offshore Ireland. It is located in the shallow water of the Celtic Sea, where there has been a long history of commercial gas production […].
“The upcoming CPR is an important milestone to independently validate the potential of Ram Head to become a real ‘game-changer’ and to provide the catalyst for further progress.”
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