Lime Norway farms into North Sea license

Hibiscus Petroleum’s jointly-controlled entity, Lime Petroleum Norway AS (Lime Norway), has executed an agreement with Lundin Norway AS (Lundin) to acquire a 30% interest in PL544, in the North Sea.  

Lundin is the operator at PL544. The parties in the license will be Lundin with 40%, Bayerngas Norge AS2 holding 30%, and Lime Norway owning the remaining 30%, after approval has been received from the relevant authority.

The license is located south of the Edvard Grieg field on the Utsira High in the North Sea, in water depth of around 100 metres. The Fosen prospect is under evaluation for possible drilling in 2015. The reservoir target is Upper/Middle Jurassic and the gross unrisked prospective resources is estimated at 192 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe). In addition to the Fosen prospect, a small gas/condensate discovery was made in Paleocene sands in 2007, which is located on the licence. Potential upside in the Paleocene will be evaluated.

According to the company, this acquisition is viewed as an opportunity to build on the position created by the earlier farm-in to PL338C in February 2015, in a prolific oil province close to infrastructure in the North Sea.

Hibiscus Petroleum’s Managing Director, Dr Kenneth Pereira, said, “Drilling in the area around the PL544 license has resulted in some significant discoveries for Lundin in recent years. We look forward to working further with Lundin, whom Lime Norway is already partnering with in a number of other licenses on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. We hope that our partnership with Lundin will yield some positive results as we leverage on the lower cost environment brought about by the current lower oil prices.”

Lime Norway is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lime Petroleum Plc (Lime). Lime is jointly-controlled by Hibiscus Petroleum which owns a 35% stake.