Thursday 9 April 2015

Rockhopper Exploration plc, the oil and gas exploration and production company with interests in the North Falkland Basin and the Greater Mediterranean region, announces that the 14/20-1 'Isobel Deep' well (the "Well") was spudded, by Premier Oil as operator, at 22:20 local time on the 8th April 2015.

The Well is located on licence PL004a in which Rockhopper has a 24% working interest and is an exploration well on the Isobel deep prospect. The Isobel Deep Well will be the first test of the F3 fan system entering the basin from the South East margin as a sequence of stacked reservoirs. This well will be targeting the Isobel deep fan in the area of maximum mapped reservoir thickness and has a GCoS of 20%. The well is targeting Gross Pmean resources of 72mmbbls (range 9-207mmbbls) although the complex as a whole in this area has gross Pmean prospective resources of just over 500mmbbls.

Drilling operations are expected to take approximately 30 days and no coring or testing is planned for this well. A further release will be made when drilling is completed.

The North Falkland Basin wells are anticipated to cost approximately US$50 million each. As a result of the various carry arrangements, the total net cash exposure to Rockhopper of the four wells is estimated at approximately US$25 million.

Samuel Moody, CEO, commented:

"We are delighted to be spudding the second well of the campaign following the successful Zebedee oil and gas discovery. The Isobel Deep Well is a high risk high impact well which has the potential in the success case to open a new development area."

Press Release