MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

North Falklands Basin oil pre-drilling campaign begins

Up to 8 wells could be drilled in the Falkands waters in the near future

Rockhopper Exploration plc announced it was moving to the final phase prior to the drilling campaign for hydrocarbons in the North Falkland Basin which will involve two to four wells out of a potential of eight with another company.

"We feel that 2008 will prove to be an extremely exciting year for Rockhopper", said Pierre Jungels, the company's Exploration's Executive Chairman. As part of this phase Rockhopper Exploration appointed SPD Group Limited ("SPD") to undertake a range of well engineering and project management services including the provision of long lead equipment such as wellheads and casing. The company has also appointed Thompson Knight Global Energy Services, a specialist adviser to oil and gas companies seeking farm-out arrangements, to assist in its drilling farm-out campaign and RPS Energy to undertake an Environmental Impact Assessment on licences PL032 & PL033 in preparation for drilling. The EIA on licences PL023 & PL024 is already in progress. Finally, Rockhopper has commissioned CGG Veritas to reprocess the short offset 3D data over licences PL032 and PL033, a task which is likely to take approximately 8 weeks. "We are now moving into the final phase prior to drilling. We have identified a number of targets in PL032 & PL033 on the 3D seismic which are of sufficiently low risk for us to drill in addition to the Ernest prospect and we are waiting to see what the interpretation of the new 2D over Weddell shows us. It is a huge advantage for us to have SPD onside bringing both experience of drilling and access to long lead items", said Pierre Jungels, Rockhopper Exploration's Executive Chairman. Following the reprocessing and evaluation of this data and completion of the EIAs, the Company expects to be ready to drill 2 to 4 targets across its acreage. These 2 to 4 wells, when added to the 4 wells to be drilled by Desire and its new partner (Rockhopper will also participate in a number of these wells) result in a potential 8 well campaign in the North Falkland Basin. "We believe that our acreage is of low to medium risk in the global exploration setting with potential to find over 3.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil using conservative parameters and that this should prove to be of considerable interest to the industry in the current environment", added Mr. Jungels. The ultimate goal is "drilling between 2 and 4 wells on our operated acreage, in addition to participating in other wells in the North Falklands Basin". Jungels indicated that the 3D still looks "hugely encouraging, we are moving forward on our work programme and with the interpretation of the new 2D on Weddell to come shortly, we feel that 2008 will prove to be an extremely exciting year for Rockhopper".