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Page added on May 20, 2016
Independent Audit Confirms The Falkland Islands Are A Billion-Barrel Basin
Falklands oil and gas producer Rockhopper Exploration Plc has announced that its net contingent oil reserves have doubled to more than 300 million barrels, and independent experts are now eyeing this as nearly billion-barrel basin.
Rockhopper owns more than 50 percent of two oilfields, Sea Lion and Isobel Elaine, which are now estimated to hold 747 million barrels of oil and gas reserves, according to the independent audit that was prepared by ERCE.
Rockhopper has a 24 percent interest in the wells, but this will rise to 64 percent once it completes its merger with Falkland Oil & Gas.
Falkland Oil Basins. Image courtesy: Rockhopper Exploration
Last November, Rockhopper agreed to buy Falkland Oil & Gas in an all-share deal that values the explorer at $87 million.
Argentinian politicians have long promised to throw a spanner in the works. Under British control since 1841, the Falklands Islands, which Argentina calls the Malvinas, have long been in dispute between the two sides.
But there are some indications that Argentina may take a softer stance on this territorial dispute now that a new president is at the helm.
Rockhopper’s takeover of Falkland Oil & Gas was announced within a day of pro-oil Mauricio Macri’s presidential election victory in Argentina, and he has indicated he would adopt a milder attitude with the UK over the Falklands.
His predecessor, former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, had used the Falklands as a campaign tool and had threatened to seize US$156 million in property and bank holdings of oil companies drilling on the islands. Among the targets were Rockhopper and Falkland Oil & Gas.
Foreign Ministry officials in Buenos Aires have said the British energy companies would face prosecution for what they called illegal operations in Argentine territory.
A March ruling by the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf could worsen the dispute. The commission expanded Argentinian maritime territory in the South Atlantic Ocean by 35 percent to include the disputed Falkland Islands and beyond.
13 Comments on "Independent Audit Confirms The Falkland Islands Are A Billion-Barrel Basin"
rockman on Fri, 20th May 2016 11:49 am
“contingent reserves”? new category for me. Maybe rocdoc can she light. Perhaps they are contingent = contingent on whether they are there or not. LOL
Lawfish1964 on Fri, 20th May 2016 12:43 pm
11 more days of global demand. Woo-hoo!! Party on!
roxy on Fri, 20th May 2016 1:33 pm
At least the Falklands will have oil forever, if they can refine it at an economic price that they can afford.
makati1 on Fri, 20th May 2016 7:52 pm
Who cares if there is a trillion barrels? It ain’t going anywhere. And for the same reason that there is more gold in the world’s ocean water than has ever been mined but it to is not going to be recovered. EROEI or in our world $IO$R
Anonymous on Fri, 20th May 2016 8:54 pm
11 days of current consumption…….
How would it take to actually extract it all? 10 years….15?…longer even?
joe on Sat, 21st May 2016 9:15 am
The British fought a war to keep these islands. I guess they need to show something for it. Otherwise people died for a storm washed rock in the sea. Any energy resources found will be expensive to get.
makati1 on Sat, 21st May 2016 9:19 am
joe, odds are none of it will ever be recovered. There is already too much oil sloshing around in tankers waiting for buyers. Not to mention that the financial system that makes big projects possible is also dying.
peakyeast on Sat, 21st May 2016 10:28 am
I mostly believe in the EROEI as a limit (besides sudden idiocy like the popular problem solver: War)- since wages can go down and down and down…
rockman on Sat, 21st May 2016 11:23 am
Joe – And then one must ask: what does the US have to show for the thousands of lives and $Trillion spent on “bringing democracy” to the ME and ridding the region of terrorists?
Anonymous on Sat, 21st May 2016 4:55 pm
What the uS has to ‘show’ for it, is not something that exactly shows up on a balance sheet or ledger you know. The uS lives, pfff, there’s 315+ million amerikants, who cares? besides their immediate families. The zionist elite hardly cares about them and neither do most americants either. The uS loses 35k-40k a year in otherwise productive citizens to car crashes alone.
Trillions of dollars? Same idea, the uS just prints money into existence to fund its wars. Domestically, the funds that went to war-machine are not available to fix america’s immense backlog of deliberately neglected social and physical ills..at home. The uS elite of course, profit from uS domestic instability as well, but the REAL money, is in destabilizing other people’s countries. Particularly ones with lots of oil, or even ones offer physical access to them, ie Syria, Afghanistan.
Last but not least, destabilizing the middle-east ensures the region cannot form independent economic ties to countries not under uS control. Think of all the projects China and Russia were forced to abandon because of the uS led effort to turn Libya in a failed state just to get an idea. Same with Iraq. Failed states cant do business with the empires rivals when there is no state left to oversee such potential arrangements. Nor can failed states sell oil in Euros, or Rubles, or gold, or have state-owned banks not beholden to the IMF, or ‘world’ bank and so on.
The uS has actually ‘gained’ a great deal from all the trillions spent. Its managed to keep otherwise stable gov’ts from engaging in normal trade and energy deals with ‘enemies’ of the american empire. And as an added bonus, has allowed a great deal of macro-manipulation of the ‘global'(read Jew-York, London, Tel Aviv), energy market. Manipulation that would otherwise be a lot harder to get away with if not for the uS’s ceaseless warfare in the region. Countless billions have flowed to uS war and energy corps that otherwise, *might* have been spent in the uS itself on things like education, infrastructure repair, health, job creation and so on.
The uS isn’t trying to ‘win’ anything in the ME because it doesn’t have to. In the absence of anything like ‘victory’, all the uS and is puppets need to do is make sure no one else ‘wins’ either.
onlooker on Sat, 21st May 2016 5:07 pm
Once again Spot on Anonymous. You just succinctly explained what the sham of the “War on Terrorism” is about. I would add that the US elite oligarchs benefit from this chaos in the ME by pitting one faction against another and then do whatever to gain “friends or allies”, bribery, threats, assassinations (drones), blackmail, special ops, etc etc. We all know the devils excrement is what ultimately US is after, their using what they have always used MONEY. Everyone is open to money. Mercenaries can come in different flavors, shapes and sizes. Today, ISIS tomorrow who knows.
GregT on Sat, 21st May 2016 6:19 pm
“You just succinctly explained what the sham of the “War on Terrorism” is about.”
Don’t forget the other part. War itself. The MIC is a very large part of the economy.
Me on Sun, 22nd May 2016 12:56 am
“But there are some indications that Argentina may take a softer stance on this territorial dispute now that a new president is at the helm.”
And THAT is why Aregentina’s politics have been in the spotlight recently. Not only is there a new president, there is a scandal… say hello to the USA and the CIA.