Northern Petroleum has signed an agreement involving Italian permits F.R39.NP and F.R40.NP which contain the Rovesti and Giove oil discoveries and ten mapped prospects. The objective of the agreement is to work with Azimuth Limited (Azimuth) a specialist global E&P business, to define and delineate suitable appraisal and exploration drilling targets. Azimuth will become a 15% interest partner in both permits by funding a promoted share of future work programmes prior to the drilling phase.

The future assignment of permit interests to Azimuth, and implementation of aspects of the agreement, are subject to receiving approvals from the Italian authorities.

The Giove and Rovesti oil fields have been independently assessed by Blackwatch Petroleum Services ("Blackwatch") to have 53.2 million barrels of probable oil reserves. In addition, as a result of work undertaken, Northern recognises the potential both for oil prospects with a mean of over 3 billion barrels of oil in place and gas prospects with a mean of over 2 Tcf of gas in place, which is over 1 billion barrels oil equivalent of prospective resource in the two permits, split approximately equally between oil and gas prospects.

Matt Haartsen, commenting on behalf of Azimuth, said: "Azimuth is excited by the opportunity to work with Northern Petroleum and looks forward to unlocking commercial reserves across the permits".

Derek Musgrove, Managing Director of Northern Petroleum Plc, commented, "This deal brings additional resources and skills to assist Northern to progress the future development of reserves and drilling of exploration prospects in the permits in one of our key areas in the Italian offshore.

"The Rovesti field was discovered in 1978 by Eni and the nearby Giove field was discovered in 1998 by Enterprise Oil Plc. Blackwatch have assigned P2 oil reserves of 33.6 million barrels to Rovesti and 19.6 million barrels to Giove and support the view that there is high potential within the two permits. We have surmised that the decisions by previous companies not to move these two discoveries towards development could be attributed to the depth of water of Rovesti in the context of the then prevailing oil industry capabilities and costs, and that Giove was found to be smaller than originally mapped and at the time low oil prices prevailed."

Tags: Northern Petroleum