British oil Exploration Company U.K. Oil & Gas Investments (UKOG) believes it has found the most important onshore oil field in the last 30 years in southern England, near Gatwick airport, a region called Weald Basin, writes BBC News. After the news, the company’s shares climbed up to 200%, closing Thursday to 169%, according to MarketWatch.
“We believe we have made a significant discovery, perhaps the most important onshore reservoir in the UK in the last 30 years, and we believe it is of national importance”, said for BBC Stephen Sanderson, general manager at UKOG.
According to estimates done after exploratory drilling and analysis done by the American company Nutech, reserves would amount to about 100 billion barrels (158 million barrels per 1,600 square meters). Most of recoverable quantities are located at depths between 762 meters and 914 meters. However, wells drilled by UKOG are the deepest of the last three decades in an area with plenty of oil activity.
The 100 billion barrels is not the amount that can be extracted completely. Initial estimates indicate that production extracted can be up to 15% of the total reserves. If it reaches the maximum degree of oil recovery, Weald Basin region could cover about 30% of Great Britain‘s oil demand by 2030.
The reserves of Saudi Arabia are 266 billion barrels of oil
The wealthiest country in the world in terms of oil, Saudi Arabia, has proven oil reserves of 266 billion barrels, and its Ghawar field, still the largest in the world, has remaining reserves of 75 billion barrels.
A comparison with the UK sector shows that the North Sea deposits produced 45 billion barrels of oil in 40 years, writes Mediafax. Great Britain is the largest oil producer in Europe, but its contribution to global output is low, 1%. In 2005, UK turned into a net crude oil importer, and in 2013 into a net oil products importer. At the start of 2014, UK held proven oil reserves of 3 billion barrels.
Prospecting licenses from Horse Hill covers 55 square miles of Weald Basin, southern England, in which UKOG has a stake of 20.36. UKOG had Wednesday, before the publication of this information, a market capitalization of about 18.7 million sterling pounds (26.6 million dollars).