Energy companies Noble Energy and Edison International have acquired a 75% and 25% interest respectively in the PL001 license, North Falkland Basin, from Argos Resources.
As a part of the deal, both the companies will provide a 5% royalty override from all hydrocarbon development on the license to Argos Resources.
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Once the transaction is completed, Argos Resources will receive an estimated $2.75m in cash, and $800,000 annually from 2016, until they begin receiving royalties.
Located to the northwest of the PL032 license, which includes the Sea Lion oil discovery, the PL001 license covers an area of nearly 285,000 acres.
Nobel Energy has identified the Rhea prospect as the initial target, and is expected to be drilled this year along with the company’s second slot on the 2015 Falkland Islands drilling campaign.
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Rhea is a Cretaceous-aged stratigraphic trap prospect, with multiple reservoir targets and total estimated gross mean unrisked resources in excess of 250 million barrels of oil.
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By GlobalDataNoble Energy executive vice-president of exploration and new ventures Susan Cunningham said: "The Rhea prospect diversifies our prospect inventory and upgrades our chance of overall success, without changing our total capital programme for the year.
"This opportunity is in a proven petroleum system, and is a strong complement to the vast number of remaining prospects on our acreage. Our Falkland Islands programme, combined with our exploration well in Cameroon, gives us the potential to discover substantial new resources through exploration this year."
In the event of Noble and Edison surrendering the licence after the drilling of the initial exploration well, Argos Resources will have 100% of the working interest reassigned to it.
Argos Resources chairman Ian Thomson said: "We are pleased to be participating in the 2015 drilling campaign in the North Falkland Basin, which is already underway, and look forward to the drilling of the first exploration well to test the Rhea Stack.
"Rhea has always been our top-ranked prospect, in which we estimate a resource potential of 449 million barrels of recoverable oil.
"We believe that success at Rhea will de-risk other prospects in the Licence."
