Company boss Hugh Mackay highlighted the fact that the leads were in the vicinity of a gas field that had come into production just recently, with substantial gas infrastructure already in place.

“Not everything offshore west Ireland is high risk, deepwater, frontier exploration. […] In particular, it is hoped that successful reprocessing of historic 3D seismic data might allow us to mature existing leads to drillable prospect status without the need to acquire new seismic data,” he said.

AIM-listed Europa Oil & Gas said it had identified gross mean un-risked prospective resources of one trillion cubic feet at license LO 16/20 and another 500,000 TCF at LO 16/21, at water depths ranging from 300 to 2,000 metres.

The two licenses were located in the Greater Corrib area of the Slyne Basin offshore Ireland, which covered 945 and 832 square kilometres, respectively.

Although the outfit was “clearly” at a very early stage in the exploration cycle, “equally clearly we have a well-defined work programme to de-risk the play” MacKay said.

The company had a strategy in place to expedite exploration by securing farm-in partners to help in reprocessing its historic seismic data for the two licenses, management said in a statement.

Its working interest in both licenses was 100%.