AIM explorers hail 'significant' oil discovery in Horse Hill, Southern England

Small cap oil exploration firm UK Oil & Gas Investments (UKOG) has made a ‘significant’ oil discovery in the South of England, said to be the largest onshore find in the country for 30 years.

Other companies with interests in the Horse Hill licences, which cover 55 square miles of the Weald Basin, include Doriemus, Alba Mineral Resources, Stellar Resources, Solo Oil and Evocutis.

Giving details in a trading update on Thursday, AIM-listed UKOG, which has a 20.36% stake in the licences, said the HH-1 oil prospection well in the Weald Basin has 158m barrels of oil in place per square mile.

While that equates to nearly a 100 billion barrels of oil from the acreage, UKOG said only a fraction of it was recoverable.

If the company can commercially extract between 5% and 15% of the total oil in the ground, it could meet between 10% and 30% of the UK’s oil demand by 2030.

With the British sector of the North Sea, having peaked in 1999, the country is currently a net importer of oil.

Seismic research carried out by US-based Nutech states: “The oil in place lies within a 653 feet aggregate net pay section, primarily within three argillaceous limestones and interbedded mudstones of the Kimmeridge, and the mudstones of the Oxford and Lias sections.”

Stephen Sanderson, chief executive of UKOGI, described the discovery as “significant” but said estimates still needed to be established of the total oil in place within the licence area. “Final assessments of the Upper Portland Sandstone and the Oxford and Lias sections are in progress.”

“Drilling the deepest well in the basin in 30 years, together with the ability to use concepts, techniques and technology unavailable in the 1980s, has provided new cutting-edge data and interpretations to comprehensively change the understanding of the area’s potential oil resources,” Sanderson added.

Shares prices of the companies involved spiked from their low base on announcement of the discovery.

At 09:20 BST on Thursday, majority stakeholder UKOG was up 236.65% or 2.60p at 3.76p, Doriemus up 0.06p or 75.76% to 0.14, Alba Mineral Resources up 0.49p or 136.11% to 0.84, Stellar Resources up 0.34p or 81.18% to 0.77p, Solo Oil up 0.22p or 37.93% to 0.76p and Evocutis up 0.07p or 34.15% to 0.28p.