Tuesday 4 April 2017

Parkmead, the UK and Netherlands focused independent oil and gas group, is delighted to announce that it has nearly doubled its stake in the major Sanda North and Sanda South structures in the West of Shetland area of the UK North Sea. These two large Palaeocene prospects are both located within Block 205/13. Through this accretive step, Parkmead has increased its equity in the licence from 56% to 100%. The Sanda North and Sanda South prospects, which are both operated by Parkmead, have the potential to contain 280 million barrels of recoverable oil on a most likely, P50 basis.

The licence covering Block 205/13 was originally awarded to Parkmead as part of the UKCS 28th Licensing Round, where Parkmead was awarded a total of six new oil and gas licences covering 10 offshore blocks.

Block 205/13 is situated in the Faroe-Shetland Trough in the West of Shetland region of the UK North Sea, to the north east of the Lancaster field. The Primary play fairway developed on this acreage is the Paleocene Vaila Formation which forms the reservoir in the important nearby oil fields at Foinaven, Schiehallion and Loyal, and also in the Laggan and Tormore gas discoveries which are situated to the north east of Sanda.

The Vaila Formation consists of a sequence of interbedded sandstones, deposited in a submarine fan environment, and contains five main reservoir units. Detailed mapping of Block 205/13 indicates two exploration targets, Sanda North and Sanda South, which are defined by distinct amplitude anomalies in the Palaeocene Vaila section.

The Sanda prospects have been de-risked through the drilling of a previous well up-dip of the amplitude anomaly. Parkmead’s experienced team of geoscientists has already undertaken extensive seismic reprocessing work on the licence and has recently acquired detailed geochemical data from the previously drilled well. This new data will be analysed to further de-risk the target ahead of a drilling decision at Sanda.

Planned 2017 exploration drilling near to Parkmead licences

Parkmead notes the high-impact exploration plans which are occurring close to the Parkmead operated Polecat and Marten oil fields in the UK Central North Sea. Statoil has recently farmed into a licence covering Blocks 20/5b & 21/1d, approximately 12km east of Polecat and Marten. It has been announced that Statoil is currently undertaking a tender process for the hiring of a drilling rig, expected to be awarded in the near future, in respect of a planned exploration well to be drilled targeting the Verbier prospect this summer. Verbier lies in the same play fairway as Polecat and Marten, and shares many similarities with these fields. In light of the findings of the Wood Review and the Maximising Economic Recovery (MER) strategy for the UK North Sea, a discovery at Verbier could have the potential to considerably increase the value of nearby oil and gas assets already owned by Parkmead.

Further value-adding opportunities

Parkmead continues to analyse a number of further value-adding opportunities, including UK and Netherlands based acquisitions, and is focused on strengthening its position in these core areas of the Group’s portfolio. The Parkmead business development team is seeing an upturn in M&A activity in our industry, and Parkmead’s strong and debt free balance sheet positions the Company to take advantage of this improving environment.

Tom Cross, Executive Chairman, commented:

“We are delighted to have nearly doubled our stake in the very large Sanda North and Sanda South prospects, which have the potential to add major value to the Company.

The West of Shetland is an area that we understand well, and this increased stake further builds on the strength of Parkmead’s asset portfolio in the UK.

We are pleased that high-impact exploration close to our acreage could add further regional value to Parkmead’s assets, at no cost to our Company.

The team at Parkmead is working intensively to evaluate and execute further value-adding opportunities in our core areas of the UK and Netherlands.”