Providence Resources, an operator of the Newgrange Licence, and its partner Sosina have agreed to licence a total of 1,200 km2 of data that Searcher Seismic will acquire offshore south-western Ireland.

Searcher plans to acquire multi-client 3D seismic in summer 2016.

The Newgrange Licence, which is situated in c. 1,000 m water depth, is located in Frontier Exploration Licence (FEL) 6/14 around 260 km off the south-west coast of Ireland.

John O’Sullivan, Technical Director of Providence, said: “Providence’s cornerstone involvement has been integral in allowing Searcher to plan such a regionally extensive 3D seismic acquisition programme. We expect, should this survey proceed as planned, that these new high resolution 3D data over our Newgrange prospect will confirm the potential within the Cretaceous section, which had been identified through the previous 2D seismic and facilitate future planning for the prospect. These new data should also allow us to evaluate the potential in the underlying vertically stacked Jurassic, where significant addition exploration prospectivity has also been identified.”

Providence holds 80 percent interest in the Licence with its partner Sosina holding the rest 20 percent.