Hague and London Oil Regulatory News (HNL)

WESSEX EXPLORATION PLC

(AIM: WSX)

Southern England Update

Further to the previous announcement in January 2012, Wessex Exploration PLC ("Wessex" or "the Company") is pleased to announce the signature of licence P1928, effective from 1 February 2012. The licence lies offshore the Hampshire and Isle of Wight coasts, between the Company's existing onshore licences PEDL's 238 and 239, and just east of the giant Wytch Farm oil field. The licence is a "Promote licence" valid for a period of two years, and can be extended into a full traditional licence with a total duration of four years with the commitment to drill an exploratory well. Total area of the licence is 243.6 square kilometres (approximately 602,000 acres).

The area covered by the licence contains the very interesting Steelhead and Beluga leads, near the coast and easily accessible to explore with slightly deviated exploratory wells based onshore. In addition, there are several small fault block leads in line with and off the eastern end of Wytch Farm oil field.

The initial work commitment of the licence consists of the purchase and reprocessing of some existing legacy seismic data, and acquisition of 70 kilometres of new 2D seismic data. This seismic work will be started as soon as the relevant environmental studies have been done and appropriate official permissions have been obtained.

Technical work done to date ("back-stripping") before the application for the area was filed in the 26th Seaward Round, suggests that a large volume of generated oil previously trapped in the Wytch Farm structure, could have re-migrated a short distance into the area of the Steelhead and Beluga leads.

Wessex has 35% equity and working interest in P1928, and a subsidiary of Australian stock exchange listed Norwest Energy NL is the operator of the licence with 65% equity and working interest.

Frederik E. Dekker, Managing Director, commented:

"P1928 is an area we have studied for several years and which we consider has great potential for hydrocarbon accumulations similar to, but smaller than the giant Wytch Farm. We fully intend to pursue an aggressive exploration programme on the acreage in a conventional manner, and alive to the fact that much of P1928 sits within areas of outstanding natural beauty."

This announcement has been approved by Frederik Dekker, BSc. (Geology), MA (Geology) FGS, who is a registered professional geologist with the American Association of Petroleum Geologist (AAPG). Mr Dekker is the Managing Director of Wessex and has over 40 years of experience in the oil industry.