Europa Oil & Gas reports major upgrade for West Firsby oil reserves

Shares in Europa Oil & Gas surged more than 30 per cent in early trade as the explorer unveiled a major upgrade to the reserves in place at the West Firsby Field in Lincolnshire.
Detailed re-mapping by Merlin Energy Resources and iProdTech has resulted in the P50 remaining reserves figure jumping by 250 per cent to 1.4 million barrels.

This assumes just a 7 per cent recovery factor on a total oil in place (STOIIP) of 20.6 million barrels.

However, Zone 2A has produced 25 per cent of its STOIIP whilst Zone 1 only 4 per cent, despite having similar reservoir characteristics.

The average East Midlands oilfield recovery factor in these reservoirs is between 15 and 25 per cent.

Managing director Paul Barrett said: “This review, commissioned in March this year, is the first comprehensive subsurface review of the West Firsby Field for some time and supports the management's view that the field holds significant unrecovered oil volumes.

“The planned WF9 well therefore has two clear objectives: to significantly increase field production and access these additional Zone 1 reserves.”

The West Firsby Oilfield is a producing oilfield located north of Lincoln in the East Midlands Petroleum Province.

The oil production is transported to the ConocoPhillips Immingham Refinery and sold at a small discount to Brent.

At 8.45am, the shares were up 3.7p at 16.7p.

Astaire Securities analyst David Johnson said: “(This is) positive newsflow for the diversified Europa that spans the E&P value chain, including production, appraisal and exploration in the UK, France

and Romania.

“The Voitinel gas discovery in Romania remains the critical value driver for the company but West Firsby provides a small boost.”