Encore’s North Sea oil bounty
NORTH Sea exploration is set to receive a significant boost this week with news of what could be the biggest discovery there in nearly a decade.
A group of UK companies including Encore Oil, which led the drilling operation, is poised to tell the market that its Catcher prospect off the east coast of Scotland holds up to 300 million barrels of oil.
Shares in £103million Encore have more than doubled this month after an initial well on Catcher found a 100 million-barrel reservoir.
Encore and its partners, Premier Oil, Wintershall, Nautical Petroleum and Agora Oil & Gas then drilled sideways, finding new deposits in the Catcher East well.
Meanwhile, Aim-listed oil and gas explorer Dominion Petroleum is today expected to announce that its offshore Tanzanian Block 7 could contain potential reserves of more than one billion barrels of oil.