Enterprise Oil's Irish management plans to have its £500 million (€635 million) development plan for the Corrib gasfield off the coast of Mayo ready for approval by the parent company board by the end of the year, Enterprise's general manager in Ireland, Mr John McGoldrick, has said. "We would hope to go for formal approval for the development by the end of the year and get all the investors in Corrib to agree to our development proposal," he said.
Enterprise has a 45 per cent interest and is the operator for the Corrib field, with two Norwegian groups, Saga and Statoil, having 21.5 per cent and 15 per cent, respectively. The remaining 18.5 per cent is held by Marathon Petroleum, operators of the Kinsale Head gasfield.
Mr McGoldrick said, as part of the programme to determine Corrib's commerciality, two more wells are to be drilled this summer - one in further appraisal of the gasfield and a second which would serve both as an appraisal well and as a production well if the go-ahead is finally given to develop the gasfield.
Detailed planning and engineering studies on the Corrib field are currently in progress, Mr McGoldrick said. He added that while there has been a gradual decoupling of gas prices from crude oil prices, the recent strong rise in oil price is a positive factor when it comes to making a final decision on Corrib's commerciality.
Unlike the Kinsale Head gasfield off Cork which was developed through two giant production platforms, any development of the deepwater Corrib field will be entirely underwater with no above water structures. Mr McGoldrick said that sub-sea development technology would be linked to a pipeline which would be brought to shore at an as yet undecided location in Mayo.
He added that from the landfall in Mayo, the gas from Corrib will have to be connected to the current natural gas grid. "We will need a connection west to east."
The Corrib field, which lies in 350 metres of water 50 miles west of Achill Island, was discovered in 1996. Last summer, a test well confirmed the presence of substantial amounts of gas.
