Research Note4 Oct 2023 11:08
Interesting little research piece from from SP Angel this morning
I3 Energy (I3E LN) 13.6p, Market Cap £164m: Serenity Update:
• I3 announced that the UK P983 licence containing the 2005 Tain discovery (previously held 50:50 by Rockrose Energy and Repsol-Sinopec) has lapsed and that the Tain acreage is therefore available to be re-licenced.The prior Tain licensees had proposed a 10mb development plan concept that included two deviated production wells, with peak production of 8kb/d routed to the Bleo Holm FPSO via a new 19km pipeline.
• I3 has been working for some time to advance a solution based on a Serenity (80% WI) unification agreement with the Tain field but made little progress as the prior owners were unable to approve the additional investment.
• With the acreage now unlicenced, i3 and its partner in the Serenity field, Europa Oil and Gas (EOG LN), plan to commence discussions on development options with the NSTA and other interested parties.
While the abandonment of the proposed Tain development by Repsol-Sinopec is disappointing, we would anticipate that the previous owners would have had a significantly higher bar to project materiality than i3 and Europa, which remain convinced of the commercial potential of a unitised development with the Serenity discovery that would involve a tie-back to existing infrastructure at the producing Blake field.
We expect the partners to look to be awarded the now unlicenced acreage and to advance a combined development solution for the Blake / Tain / Serenity area.