Petro River Oil Corp. provided an update from Horizon Energy Partners LLC regarding the development progress of two separate oil and gas interests in southern England on Dec. 21.

There are about 28,000 acres in the Dorset area south of the Wytch Farm oil field, and Petro River is currently a party to a conditional purchase agreement to acquire an interest in Horizon Energy.

Wytch Farm, the largest onshore oil field in Western Europe, produced about 500MMbbl of oil and 175Bcf of natural gas since first production in 1979. British Gas Corp. (BG) discovered it in 1973 and as part of BG’s privatization, the field, which began producing oil in 1979, was sold to BP, which took over as operator in 1984.

In May 2011, BP sold its majority interest in Wytch Farm to Perenco, a private independent oil and gas company.

Both of the licenses were acquired by Southwestern Resources Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Horizon Energy, and are in areas of the migration fairway of the rich Liassic oil section.

Horizon Energy owns a 10% interest in the Dorset offshore license P1918, with an option to acquire an additional 65% by electing to drill a well prior to April 30, 2016. The license comprises about 26,000 acres.

Horizon Energy and its partners recently completed a merge and pre-stack depth migration reprocessing of two existing 3-D seismic surveys within the license area. The results confirm and enhance the previous interpretation of two structural features within the license.

Several wells drilled within the license area have encountered oil and gas shows and three flowed oil and/or gas on test.

Horizon Energy believes at least 20MMbbl of recoverable prospective oil resources are contained in the larger structural feature, known as Colter. The process of identifying industry participants to drill a well to further delineate Colter is currently underway.

In January 2016, a new 2-D line that will tie the onshore and offshore data sets will be acquired. If this data confirms the current interpretation, it will high-grade another offshore hydrocarbon prospect that can be drilled from an onshore location.

Horizon Energy owns a 50% interest in applications submitted to the United Kingdom Oil & Gas Authority (OGA) pursuant to the Dorset onshore license.

On Dec. 17, the OGA awarded Southwestern and partners two blocks within its application area, comprising more than 2,000 acres. Subject to the results of the 2-D tie line, one of these blocks will afford access to a land surface location that will enable them to drill a well onshore to the Dorset offshore license area.

Petro River Oil Corp. is based in New York.