United Oil & Gas Plc said it has received an environmental permit from Jamaica’s National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) for UOG’s planned offshore surveys at its 100 percent owned Walton Morant License.
The environmental permit is valid for five years, the company said in a news release. The permit encompasses a range of non-invasive offshore surveys, including bathymetric, geotechnical, and environmental baseline studies.
The surveys will “further enhance” United’s technical dataset and are designed to de-risk the license by providing critical data to support prospectivity, including potential hydrocarbon presence in the seabed, the company said.
While not required for the farmout, they will support ongoing technical workstreams, underpinned by the recent license extension to January 2028, United stated.
The approval represents a key milestone in progressing toward the next phase of operational activities under the license, UOG said.
A final outstanding permit, known as a Beach License, is expected shortly and will complete all approvals that are required before operational activities can begin, the company said.
United CEO Brian Larkin said, “With the Environmental Permit now secured and the Beach License expected shortly, we are moving into a position to advance technical operations and rebuild momentum across one of the most exciting and underexplored basins in the region”.
“The Walton Morant license presents a compelling opportunity, with billion-barrel-scale potential, drill-ready targets, and a source rock interval of similar age to that found in the prolific basins of Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, and elsewhere in the Caribbean region,” Larkin continued.
“Encouraging industry interest continues, and advancing the farmout remains a core strategic priority. The farmout process is progressing in parallel to survey preparations and is not contingent upon them. Our focus is on unlocking value through both technical de-risking and commercial engagement,” he added.
United will also execute a piston core survey, which will involve the collection of 40 to 60 seabed sediment samples from the Walton and Morant basins using a long, cylindrical piston corer designed to penetrate the seafloor and retrieve undisturbed score samples from the seafloor, the company said in an earlier statement.
The samples will undergo detailed geochemical analysis to improve understanding of the hydrocarbon generation potential and reservoir quality across the license area. To aid in selecting viable seabed locations, a multibeam echosounder survey is planned over certain deeper areas of the license, particularly in regions of the Morant Basin not currently covered by 3D seismic data, the statement said.
Further, the survey will include a heat probe analysis at selected locations to measure background heat flow and sediment thermal conductivity. The data will support refined basin modelling and petroleum system analysis, helping to identify and prioritize areas most likely to host commercial hydrocarbon accumulations, United said.
According to United, the Walton-Morant license is comparable in scale and geological potential to ExxonMobil’s prolific Stabroek Block in Guyana, where over 11 billion barrels of recoverable oil have been discovered. Like Stabroek, Walton Morant features large structural traps with high-quality reservoir potential but remains substantially underexplored.
The 22,400-square-kilometer Walton-Morant block hosts over 40 identified leads and prospects. Eleven of these have been independently verified by Gaffney-Cline in a prospective resources report, collectively estimated to hold over 2.4 billion barrels of unrisked mean prospective resources, according to an earlier news release.
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