The onshore oil and gas company, UKOG, announced today it is hiring a US specialist to assess the results from the Horse Hill well drilled last year near Horley in Surrey.

Houston-based NUTECH will also help UKOG “maximise the potential value” of the Horse Hill license area.

UKOG’s chairman, David Lenigas, said this afternoon on Twitter:

“This is very big news for Horse Hill today. NUTECH are the world leaders. They are excited about HH”.

“Horse Hill well was a big surprise to us all, and NUTECH alliance should really show us and UK what the real potential is.

“The NUTECH deal should ultimately benefit the HH consortium in time I hope. NUTECH like HH, otherwise they would not have come on board.

A statement from UKOG said NUTECH would look at the volume of oil in place and the rock mechanical properties of the area. It would also give advice on testing and completion of Horse Hill-1 and future wells in the area.

Last year, Horse Hill-1 identified an estimated 8.2m barrels of “most likely” oil in place in the Portland sandstone. David Lenigas also suggested the well had encountered what looked like a big find of hydrocarbons in the Kimmeridge clay layers.

Fracking fears

This find alarmed anti-fracking campaigners in the area. Sarah Finch, a Green Councillor from Redhill, told Frack Free Surrey:

“We suspected that Horse Hill Developments Ltd were always interested in unconventional oil and gas and, despite their protestations, it seems we’ve been proved right.  We will watch developments closely and will oppose any plans to frack here. Fracking would be a disaster for the environment – we should be investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies instead.”

Today’s statement from UKOG said:

“The analysis will encompass the conventional Portland Sandstone oil pay and the full 1,496 ft thick gross, highly organically rich and thermally mature, Upper Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay (“KC”) Formation source rock section, which includes an oil saturated conventional Upper KC limestone reservoir”.

“Additional analysis will be undertaken in the Middle and Lower Jurassic source rock sections to help the company understand hydrocarbon charge mechanisms and related potential in this part of the Weald basin.”

New CEO

Earlier this week, UKOG appointed geologist and oil executive Stephen Sanderson, as its new CEO. Sanderson, who wrote the Horse Hill technical appraisal report, described the HH-1 discovery as a “key paradigm shift” for exploration in the Weald Basin.

Testing plans

He told investors that the Horse Hill partners were now seeking permissions to flow test the discovered conventional Upper Portland oil pool in the Horse Hill well, as well as investigating the possibility of adding a test within the conventional Kimmeridgian Limestone play.

“The discovery that the Kimmeridge Clay is highly organically rich, within the early to peak mature oil window and has most likely charged the oil found within the Kimmeridgian Limestone is particularly exciting and has re-written the petroleum geology of this part of the basin.”