Parkmead doubles stake in North Sea field duo

Parkmead, the UK and Netherlands focused independent oil and gas group, has doubled its stake in the Polecat and Marten oil fields in the UK Central North Sea. 

The Polecat and Marten fields are located in Blocks 20/3c & 20/4a within Licence P.2218. Parkmead has acquired a further 50% of Licence P.2218, and now operates the licence with 100% equity. Parkmead initially secured its first 50% interest in these blocks as part of the UK 28th Licensing Round awards, where the company won a total of nine new oil and gas licences covering 12 offshore blocks.

The Polecat and Marten fields lie approximately 20km east of the Buzzard field, and are located close to Parkmead’s large Perth-Dolphin-Lowlander (PDL) hub project in the prolific Moray Firth area of the Central North Sea. Polecat and Marten are two sizeable existing Buzzard sandstone oil accumulations, which are jointly estimated to hold over 90 million barrels of oil in place and over 33 million barrels of contingent resources. Through this acquisition, Parkmead has increased the group’s total contingent resources by 39%, from 42.5 to 59.1 million barrels of oil equivalent.

The company said that the Polecat and Marten could be highly valuable to Parkmead as, given their close proximity to PDL, they could be jointly developed as part of the Greater PDL Area project.

Polecat was discovered in 2005 and appraised in 2010. The 2010 appraisal well was flow tested at 4,373 barrels per day of good quality 32° API oil. The Marten discovery was made in 1984, encountering three oil bearing sandstones of Upper Buzzard age. Parkmead benefits from the large amount of existing data on the block, gathered as a result of wells already drilled in the area.

Tom Cross, Executive Chairman, commented: “We are delighted to have doubled our stake in these two oil fields, which significantly increases Parkmead’s contingent oil and gas resources by some 39%.

“Polecat and Marten could be highly valuable to Parkmead’s PDL project by contributing an additional 90 million barrels of oil in place to the already large oil and gas reserves base at PDL.”