Oil and gas exploration and development company Orcadian Energy has received a three-year extension from the UK’s North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) for License P2244.
The licence, which contains the Pilot oilfield, will now expire on 1 December 2028.
It provides Orcadian with an 18.75% carried interest, with Ping Petroleum acting as operator and holding an 81.25% stake.
Orcadian said that the operator is currently preparing a subsurface description of the Pilot field using three-dimensional (3D) seismic data from analytics company TGS.
The extension is intended to allow time for the development and submission of a revised field development plan.
Orcadian said that it will assist the operator in creating a plan that optimises oil recovery and reduces CO₂ emissions during production.
Orcadian Energy CEO Steve Brown said: “Pilot can be a new low-carbon hub on the Western Platform in the Central North Sea with the potential to produce a total recoverable resource of well over 100mbbl [million barrels] from Pilot and adjacent discoveries. Exploration success and renewed licensing of near-infrastructure discoveries could raise the potential recovery from this hub to nearly 500mbbl.
“This licence extension [gives] our operator the time and space to design a low-emissions development scheme that can thrive in the post-EPL [Energy Profits Levy] fiscal regime that has been proposed and consulted on by Treasury, which everyone in the industry is awaiting with bated breath and which is the fiscal regime that matters for Orcadian’s projects.”
The Pilot field, discovered by PetroFina in 1989, is reported to contain a high-quality reservoir and 79mbbl of contingent viscous oil resources.
According to Orcadian, plans for the Pilot development include the use of polymer flooding and wind power to improve the environmental performance of viscous oil production.
The development is being designed as a low-emissions facility, with a phased approach based on polymer flooding, a floating production storage and offloading vessel and power supplied by either a floating wind turbine or a nearby wind farm.
Orcadian’s interests include an 18.75% fully carried stake in Licence P2244 (block 21/27a) and full ownership of Licence P2482 (blocks 28/2a and 28/3a).
P2482 is said to cover the Elke and Narwhal discoveries, which together hold 53mbbl of contingent resources.
