The Ministry of Science, Energy & Technology has selected French consulting firm Cayambe to prepare staff for the managing and monitoring of offshore drilling operations that may occur.

The three-month contract includes training in the areas of well planning, design, implementation and abandonment, and preparing a “paper” exercise for the spudding of an exploration well in water depth of 500-3,000 metres.

The contract contemplates a conditional second phase, which is dependent on United Oil & Gas deciding to drill for oil in the Walton Morant block, located off Jamaica’s coastal waters, where it has an offshore exploration license. Last year, the Jamaican Government extended the initial exploration period to January 31, 2022, at which time United Oil & Gas, based in Britain, will be required to make an initial ‘drill or drop’ decision.

Whether the company chooses to drill or give up the licence is dependent on securing a partner.

The British oil and gas company has been bullish on finding commercial reserves of oil in Jamaica, but it needs a partner to help foot the cost of reaping the crude.

To this extent, United Oil & Gas is now undertaking a joint venture farm-out effort with the aim of bringing in an additional partner for potential exploration drilling in 2022. Farm-out occurs when a company gives contracts to outside parties.

The formal farm-out campaign for the Walton Morant offshore licence follows the release of a report for the acreage, which identified an unrisked mean prospective resource estimate of 2.4 billion barrels of resources that resemble oil across 11 prospects and leads.

United Oil & Gas is pumping more money in its search for oil in Jamaica, indicative of its unrelenting thrust to find the precious commodity off the coast of the island. United Oil & Gas Plc has budgeted over US$400,000 this year to hunt for oil in Jamaica’s waters.

This allocation is four times more than what it spent last year. Last year the oil explorer spent US$103,410 on its Jamaican project and is upping that this year to US$402,500, or around $60 million in local currency based on its year-end December 2020 earnings report released two weeks ago.

United Oil & Gas has outright ownership of the licence to explore the Walton-Morant block having bought out its former majority exploration partner, Tullow Oil Plc, which had an 80 per cent stake. United Oil & Gas Jamaican assets were valued by the company at US$3.6 million, up to December 2020.

The Walton Morant licence extends for over 32,000 square kilometres and with numerous plays and prospects already identified across three separate basins. This opportunity provides United with exciting access to high-risk/high-reward frontier exploration.

A report United Oil & Gas commissioned from Gaffney Cline & Associates revised the potential find in the Walton-Morant area upwards to 2.4 billion barrels of resources that resemble oil. The most impressive resources were found in a micro zone called Colibri, and a formal farm-out process was launched to find partners to fund the drilling of that prospect.

Established in 2015, United Oil & Gas is in the business of oil and gas exploration as well as development and production with existing assets in Egypt, UK, Italy and Jamaica.

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