A small Irish drilling company has announced the first commercial oil strike in Ireland's waters.
Although the initial 3,500b/d output estimates are dwarfed by the millions of barrels produced by the Brent field off the coast of Scotland, the announcement by Providence Resources that its Ballyroe Well has hit commercial scale reserves is good news for the country.
Providence's Chief Executive, Tony O'Reilly Jnr, claimed the high-quality oil find, in a field estimated at some 60m barrels of recoverable oil, would attract more exploration in the region. Although the company has been operating in Ireland for around 30 years, is has only recently taken on Barryroe, which lies 50km off the coast of County Cork in 100m of water.
“Given that we only assumed operatorship of Barryroe in late 2010, I would like to pay tribute to all of the team members who have helped to deliver such a successful outcome to this programme (site survey, 3D acquisition/processing, rig procurement, drilling & testing) within such a challenging 15 month timeline", O'Reilly commented.
The news will provide a boost to Ireland generally; the so-called "Celtic Tiger" having seen a dramatic reversal of its stellar growth during the late 90's through to 2007. The global recession hit Ireland particularly hard with GDP plummeting and unemployment rising and in 2011, Moody's rated Irish government bonds as 'junk'.
The oil find - which, according to Providence, was double its initial estimates and would be profitable with oil prices at anything about $30/barrel - is also good news for the small oil company itself, which will be working with ExxonMobil, Petronas and Reposol to develop the project and having last year signed heads of agreement with Shell's Trading and Marketing division in an oil off-take agreement for future Barryroe oil production.