Egdon Resources has confirmed the transfer of the operation of its Cloughton shale and tight gas licence to Europa Oil & Gas.

The licence, PEDL343, is in the Cleveland Basin, north of Scarborough in North Yorkshire. It includes the Cloughton gasfield, discovered in the carboniferous formation in 1986. The licence is next to the offshore Resolution field in P1929.

PEDL343 was granted in 2016 in the 14^th onshore round and was originally operated by Third Energy. At the time, it was described as a shale gas licence.

Approval for the transfer from Egdon to Europa was given by the regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority, yesterday.

Egdon’s managing director, Mark Abbott, said:

“This transfer of operatorship allows Egdon to maintain a clear focus on our near-term priority projects whilst also enabling Europa to apply its resources to progressing the Cloughton prospect to potential appraisal drilling operations as quickly as possible.”

Egdon has a 40% share of PEDL343. The remaining stake is held by Europa (40%) and Petrichor Energy (20%).

In a statement today, Europa said the discovery well in the Cloughton field achieved gas flow rates of 40,000 scf/day during testing.

But the company said that with the “right completion and production optimisation techniques” it could flow at 6 mmscf/day.

Europa said the gas was “good quality sweet gas” with more than 98% methane and ethane. It said the location of an appraisal well pad had been identified, Europa said. Construction and production were subject to permits and planning approvals, it said.

Europa’s chief executive, Will Holland, said:

“The Europa technical team is now working through the subsurface data to calculate a range of probabilistic recoverable gas volumes and will produce a conceptual development plan for the field, which we believe will demonstrate the material potential value of the licence.

“There is undoubtedly a significant volume of gas within the structure, which could be brought online relatively quickly and would displace imported gas volumes.

“Domestically produced gas generates employment, local and national tax revenues and has a lower carbon footprint than imported gas. As such development of Cloughton is fully aligned with the UK Governments British Energy Security Strategy and Net Zero 2050 goals.”