UK Oil & Gas gearing up for Loxley planning committee meeting re-run

UK Oil & Gas announced on Friday that, following Surrey County Council's August decision to redetermine its Loxley gas appraisal planning application, the council had now confirmed that the rerun was scheduled for 27 November.

The AIM-traded firm said the “unprecedented” rerun decision was taken by the council following external advice regarding the company's, and more than 100 other, formal complaints questioning the lawfulness of Surrey County Council’s June planning committee meeting.

During that meeting, the members voted by six-to-five against SCC's planning officer's recommendation to consent to UK Oil & Gas’ development.

UK Oil & Gas noted that a Xodus report estimated that the company's 100%-held PEDL234 licence contained “significant” calculated mean and high case recoverable gas volumes of 34 billion cubic feet and 54 billion cubic feet, respectively, placing Loxley as the second-largest gas accumulation ever discovered and flow tested in the UK onshore.

Xodus calculated that about 78% of the overall Loxley gas accumulation lay within PEDL234.

“Despite the further delay to the planning committee meeting rerun, UK Oil & Gas welcomes the opportunity to restate why its low footprint Loxley gas project is of material local and national economic importance, representing an opportunity to power around 200,000 Surrey homes from net zero-compliant UK gas,” said chief executive officer Stephen Sanderson.

“The submitted development presents minimal visual, local business and highway impacts and already has a full environmental permit from the Environment Agency.”

Additionally, the company updated the market on its 67.5%-held PEDL143 licence, explaining that a detailed study examining the viability of drilling the A24, formerly Holmwood, Portland prospect's centre from selected sites outside the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, each more than three kilometres from the target, concluded that the required long-reach and shallow target-depth wells were neither technically viable or economically feasible.

As a result, UK Oil & Gas and its partners had now relinquished their interests in the licence.

“It remains a great disappointment to the company that the licence's former operator, Europa Oil and Gas, whilst in possession of planning consent, failed to drill the prospect from the Holmwood site, around one kilometre from the target,” the company’s board said in its statement.

At 1004 BST, shares in UK Oil & Gas were down 3.5% at 0.15p.