Israel’s Navitas Petroleum has locked in the increase of its oil and gas footprint off the coast of the Falkland Islands by firming up a deal to get a lion’s share in a license within the North Falkland Basin.
Following a non-binding memorandum of agreement with JHI Associates (JHI), in which Eco (Atlantic) Oil & Gas – with whom the Israeli firm signed a framework agreement related to several assets – currently has a 6.6% interest, Navitas executed a farm-in agreement to acquire a 65% working interest and operatorship in the PL001 North Falklands Basin license adjacent to the Sea Lion development.
As a result, JHI will retain a 35% working interest, which continues to be held via its wholly owned subsidiary, JHI Falkland (JHIF). Aside from the payment of its share of JHIF’s past costs in connection with the licence, Navitas will fund JHI’s 35% stake’s share of the costs associated with potential future activities, including an exploration well and potential appraisal well, up to an aggregate cap of $14 million.
This funding will be provided via a loan-carry arrangement repayable from 85% of JHIF’s free cash flow from production under the PL001 license, which is located immediately to the west of PL032 containing the Navitas-operated Sea Lion project, which recently achieved a final investment decision (FID) with respect to Phase 1 of this giant development complex with over 700 million oil barrels of recoverable resources.
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PL001, which covers approximately 1,126 square kilometers in modest water depths of around 500 meters, is fully covered by 3D seismic and contains significant exploration potential. JHI’s internal best estimates indicate a prospect inventory containing an aggregate 3.1 billion oil barrels of prospective recoverable resources with an aggregate upside of more than 10 billion barrels of oil.
Two oil prospects, Tyche and Dinlas , have been high-graded within the same stratigraphic interval so far as the Sea Lion accumulation, each containing a potential 400 million barrels of oil recoverable. The first oil from Sea Lion Phase 1 is planned for 2028.