UK Oil & Gas plc announced this morning its 50% acquisition in the Basur-Resan oil licence in south east Turkey has been officially approved. The company said it was now a named party on the licence.
UKOG said “rapid monetisation” of Basur-Resan was now possible within a year. It predicted that the licence had the potential to exceed estimates for oil and gas at UKOG’s yet-to-be-approved projects at Arreton on the Isle of Wight and Loxley/Dunsfold in Surrey.
UKOG reached agreement with the American firm, Aladdin Middle East Ltd, to buy into the licence in July 2020. At the time, UKOG described it as an “irresistible opportunity” that would “expose the company to potentially transformational oil reserves that can be rapidly monetised”.
UKOG’s chief executive, Stephen Sanderson, said today:
“It is now evident that, in the success case, the Basur-Resan appraisal project has the potential to surpass the recoverable oil and gas volumes currently assigned by Xodus to our material UK Arreton and Loxley appraisal projects.
“It also has the advantage of lower drilling and operating costs and, facilitated by Turkish petroleum law, the possibility to rapidly monetise the success case within a year. For these reasons success could be transformational for the Company.”
UKOG estimated the gross costs of drilling and testing the Basur-3 well at about £2.4m. This compared with about £6m spent on the similar depth Horse Hill-2 well in Surrey, the company said.
Mr Sanderson said UKOG would focus in the first half of 2021 on design and delivery of a Basur-3 appraisal well.
Other targets for the next six months included “further optimising” Horse Hill and pursuing an appeal against the refusal of drilling at Loxley, Mr Sanderson said.
Update 20/1/2021: Since this article was published, UKOG announced it had completed its transaction with Aladdin Middle East Ltd for half of the licence.
UKOG presentation on Resan licence
- UKOG also issued a statement today on drilling plans for the Horse Hill site. More details on DrillOrDrop
DRILL OR DROP? 
“…….humanity is running an ecological Ponzi scheme in which society robs nature and future generations to pay for boosting incomes in the short term (Ehrlich et al., 2012).”
Keynes – “the animal spirits of private enterprise”.
Does UKOG even care what its planned activities will do to the planet? Does it care that the scale of the threat to the biosphere and all its life forms by continuing to develop fossil fuels is so great that even experts find it difficult to grasp – (Ehrlich et al. 2021)? Is UKOG even remotely conscious of what’s at stake?
Well, 1720, with Turkey currently importing the vast majority of it’s current use of oil, it could be construed that development of indigenous reserves indicates UKOG are conscious of what’s at stake-as using indigenous reserves are better for the environment. Turkey seems to have decided that is so.
And, the same can be said of Loxley, HH, and IOW in respect of the UK.
But, you could say you don’t utilize oil or it’s products, although we all know you do, and therefore no oil should be extracted. That one has recently been tried, reference UKOG, and found to be a little lacking.
In respect of Turkey, I would suggest it a great deal better for them to concentrate on seeing if they can utilize their own reserves (if there) than getting involved in Libya, as current.
But, I suspect that is no concern to the antis, as their message has to ignore the collateral damage to make it work. A bit contrary to the higher morals that are preached, but that’s what you get with dogma.
Reblogged this on Wessex Solidarity.