Arreton, Isle of Wight, 17 December 2019. Photo: DrillOrDrop
UKOG said this morning it had submitted a planning application for oil drilling and flow testing at Arreton on the Isle of Wight.
The company said the application was due to be published on 27 March 2020.
The application has been expected for several months. UKOG unveiled plans for Arreton, and another Isle of Wight site at Godshill, at a public meeting in December.
During that event, UKOG said it would not use fracking to extract oil on the island. It said it would use an acid wash to clean the wells but told DrillOrDrop injection of acid under pressure would not be necessary.
Site of UKOG’s proposed Arreton oil site, 23 March 2020. Photo: Frack Free Isle of Wight
In a statement today, UKOG said it planned to drill a deviated borehole, to be called Arreton-3.
If short-term testing indicated this was commercially viable, the company would drill a horizontal sidetrack from it (Arreton-3z), followed by an extended well test. The work would be carried out within three years, UKOG said.
Arreton site. Source: UKOG brochure
The Arreton site is close to the boundary of the Isle of Wight area of outstanding natural beauty.
Some people who attended December’s public meeting complained that the development would industrialise the countryside. UKOG said today the Arreton site had been picked because it was next to land that already had non-agricultural commercial uses, including an anaerobic digester and a quarry.
The company described Arreton as a “geological analogue” of its Horse Hill site in Surrey. There were three stacked Jurassic oil pools, UKOG said. Estimated oil in place was 127 million barrels and UKOG’s share of recoverable contingent resources was an estimated 14.9 million barrels (mid case).
Arreton is the second of two new planning applications for UKOG. It also has an application in the planning system for what it calls the Loxley site at Dunsfold in Surrey.
Company chief executive Stephen Sanderson said:
“Whilst UKOG’s primary focus will remain on maintaining continued long-term stable and profitable oil production at Horse Hill, our efforts will also continue with those actions necessary to ensure that both the Arreton oil and Loxley gas appraisal projects move forwards as swiftly as the current UK situation permits.”
The application will now be reviewed by planning officers before it was validated. Officers may go back to UKOG to verify information or ask for further material. Only then would it be published and a public consultation begin.
Call for deferral
The main group opposing the application called this morning for it to be delayed because of the covid-19 crisis:
“Frack Free Isle of Wight believes there should be motivation for the full council to take a precautionary approach and defer this application, until at least the end of this crisis, to ensure due diligence so the Council’s full focus can be given to this most important application and a decision made by our council for our community, rather than the Oil & Gas Authority or any other Government agency.”
The group added:
“Our major concern is whether this unusual situation will hinder the best efforts of the planning committee to function efficiently and whether this could result in this application being transferred from the Isle of Wight Council to the Oil & Gas Authority or Secretary of State for Communities for a decision in the light of the current crisis.”
“It therefore has implications for the efficacy of the public consultation, given the restrictions of movement and opportunities to hold large community gatherings and information meetings for the public to assist them in the consultation process, particularly since currently libraries are closed for internet access and there are those within the community who are not internet proficient.”
Categories: Regulation
DRILL OR DROP? 
In the words of one investor this morning, another “Dog” How much longer will people keep paying Sanderson to live in luxury while their savings go down the pan ? Long gone are the days of 10p and talk of the £1 club. Wannabe millionaires lol
Share Price:
0.375
Bid:
0.35
Ask:
0.40
Change:
-0.025 (-6.25%)
You should hear what they are saying about Tesla, Jono! That REALLY is living in luxury.
I do smile when I see your attempts at reading the markets. Not an awful lot of people invest what they can not afford on AIM. A few perhaps, but not a great number. For the rest, it is a gamble, just like the lottery but a bit easier to make money-like the 10%+ those UKOG investors could have made last week. That is why you find paid fools on the chat rooms thinking their attempts will either increase the share price, or decrease it, whilst the majority just get on with ignoring them, perhaps gaining the 10%+ and then decreasing their average price.
The silent majority-bless them. Often ignored, but they usually see the wood for the trees.
(Funny how you always miss the upturns! LOL.)
Before anyone states the obvious, yes I know that. But, the basis of this one just the same.
I feel so sorry for the local people who have to put up with this as well as everything else. Have we not got enough to contend with, self isolation, national isolation, without being plagued by these insensitive and inappropriate bullies?
In my mind the language is stronger, but I have edited myself so that Ruth does not have to.
Really, Kathryn?
What’s to “put up with”??
No more than any on shore oil site in UK. MANY local people find those much better neighbours than a lot of other projects, MANY who move in AFTER the sites have been developed have no idea they are there. MANY in self isolation will be relying upon van deliveries of medicines and food. MANY who require hospital treatment will require hospital transport. MANY who require that food to keep coming, will expect the farmers to be out there planting crops with the help of the red diesel, and those supplying farmers to keep on supplying with truck loads of seed, fertilizer etc.
Let’s hope those essential workers are listening to young Naomi, who suggests:
“I don’t want you to panic. I want you to think.”
Ruth has reported on the butterflies and buzzards flitting around such sites, so just think of such tranquil scenes and the anger will subside.
It will never and should never subside.
Brilliant. Sooner the better.
The people of the isle of wight will never allow drilling. They are organised and ready to challenge UKOG at every turn.
Horse Hill has been an expensive failure.
UKOG is on it’s knees and even the hardened investors have now realised the only winner here has been Sanderson.
This will be the final nail in the coffin,we will soon see how low the shares can go.
Hmm. Well, sorry to disagree Dave, but I have friends and family on IOW, and they are quite relaxed about it. Some of them are quite pleased to have Fawley Oil Refinery helping to clean the water in the Solent and thereby assisting the tourist industry in the area.
Not sure an organisation called Frack Free IOW is going to get support from anyone who is really interested in this application.
If such is needed to excite interest, it says a lot for how genuine this lot are, and those who have an interest should do their own research and check the reality against the twaddle. If that is being “organised”, it begs the question as to how organised fake news is elsewhere, and why. The answer? To fool people.
News item: People do not like others trying to fool them and turning them into useful idiots.
Clever but disgusting manipulation of language has attempted to undermine the opposition’s truth. ‘Not fracking’ is a simple message worthing of Cummings. It’s quite a long-winded business nowadays to explain why one day it will be fracking by all truthful definitions, and why it is/ will be unconventional. I shall not waste my breath.
Katherynmcwhirter
If they do not intend to fracture the rock then it is not fracking. Is there another definition of fracking ( which is truthful) which can be shared, which does not involve fracturing anything?
Precisely, fracturing something. They’d have to do it. Even to get a worthwhile yield from the micrite. But their end game must be fracking the shale.
But especially now, for Christ’s sake, can they not give us some peace?
Katherynmcwhirter
It seems that they do not agree with your opinion of the geology and likely yield from the site. Time will tell no doubt, but just to note that they have not shown any intention to frack the planned well.
hewes62
It is simply a mechanism to attract and excite a few who are too lazy to research a subject. No other reason.
Could equally call themselves, Keep IOW Zombie Free, and it would do the trick.
The REALITY is that PLANNING is about a specific application. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with something that might or might not happen in the future. That would require another, separate and different application. Any sensible person living in the real world will be not only be aware of that, but probably have direct experience of it. But, they are also the ones who will bother to do the research.
Others can trot out their disgusting manipulation of language by throwing in a few trigger words, like Cummings, Trump, Boris and feel that gets the excitement going. There are donkeys who do well in horse breeding establishments I remember from my agricultural days. A happy life but the horses are the ones that are the reality.
Any sensible person knows that planning law is an ass, designed to support the developer. So that planners are obliged to be blinkered and myopic.
Martin
Yes. No shale fracking carried out since the moratorium and none planned ( and counting ). No other fracking planned either it seems ( pending Wressle plans ).
Dull days for those against fracking?
What has Worthing got to do with the IOW?
What has Worthing got to do with anything?
We are all human beings, whether we live in the Isle of W or Worthing or Balcombe or Lancashire or Yorkshire or Pennsylvania or Nigeria or The Middle East or wherever.
We all have our own places, and the right to clean air and water.
Especially now it seems coldly cruel for companies to plague communities further by applying for ongoing exploration.
KMC
All the more reason to develop local oil supplies rather than force dirty air and water on others in the world?
However, ‘do not use it’ seems to be far better than ‘keep it in the ground’ when it comes to CO2 reduction.
I expect that, as in Lincs, use has dropped somewhat, and I look.forwards to the day both the IOW and Lincs are self sufficient in oil production. Truly local energy for local.people rather than …don’t care, not here, carry on consuming.
Bit ironic some comments!
The Solent is CLEANER thanks to the FACT that Fawley Refinery cleans the cooling water before it replaces it back into the sea. Record line caught sea bass recently, (returned, of course.)They are a pretty good indicator.
Other parts of our shores will be much cleaner without any more Torrey Canyon disasters, and the air equally also as such will not need to be set on fire to alleviate against the pollution.
An oil well within a short distance of an existing refinery. Sounds ideal. Same refinery that processes most of the aviation fuel for many of the UK airports, which will continue for many years to come. Including Gatwick!
Last time I looked, the largest on shore oilfield in Europe, not too far from IOW, was snuggled down within an area of natural beauty, loads of rare beasts around it, housing prices VERY expensive and most neighbours quite happy. The “alternative” being built-(WITHOUT PLANNING PERMISSION)-until stopped in W. Germany, doesn’t look too good in comparison, with thousands of trees being felled and sand lizard habitat trashed.
The REALITY is there for anyone on the IOW to see. Quite a few will be working at the refinery or have friends/relatives who do so, therefore making fake claims around this one may fall on fallow ground.
I agree with you Kathryn!! Shock/horror.
I think the Planners should be doing all they can to facilitate our food supplies being secured and the farmers having no difficulty working as essential workers and planting our crops, with local cleaner red diesel.
But, many laws are the same. In the UK there are good laws that some people dislike and there are some bad laws that some people dislike.
Fortunately, we are still a society where we can change law via a legal process. The antis are using it all the time, as well as commercial businesses. If either can not change law via that process then that is democracy. If some still want to ignore, that is anarchy. And there will be some, who initially stated they wished to disassociate from that methodology who will then seek to embrace it and excite it when all else fails.
It is a well trodden path. Which, I must tread and get back to my planting.