By Alex MacDonald

LONDON--Europa Oil & Gas (Holdings) PLC (EOG.LN) said Friday it has secured a new license option in the southern Porcupine Basin, which lies offshore Ireland.

It expects to receive a letter of award from Ireland's government shortly, detailing the area of the award.

The government awarded 14 licensing options in its latest bidding round to companies that include Eni Spa (E), Europa Oil & Gas, ExxonMobil (XOM), Nexen, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CNOOC Ltd. (0883.HK), Scotia Waterous, a unit of Scotiabank, Statoil ASA (STL.OS) and Woodside Petroleum Ltd. (WPL.AU) as operators, along with BP PLC (BP) who will partner with Eni.

"We are pleased that major and mid-cap oil companies are now taking acreage positions around our licences and we feel this is providing validation of our long-held belief that the South Porcupine Basin is underexplored and has the potential to hold substantial hydrocarbon reserves," said Europa Chief Executive Hugh Mackay.

The Europe-focused oil and gas explorer is still in the process of reassuming full ownership and operating responsibility of licences FEL 2/13 and FEL 3/13 in the Basin from Kosmos Energy Ltd.'s (KOS) after the latter decided to exit its investments in Ireland in the current protracted oil price weakness.

The FEL 2/13 and FEL 3/13 licenses have the potential to hold about 1.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent resources across three prospects. These are valued at $1.1 billion, taking development risks into account and $7 billion in the absence of any development risks.

Europa is currently trying to find a partner to develop the three prospects.

Write to Alex MacDonald at alex.macdonald@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 12, 2016 03:26 ET (08:26 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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