Premium Content This Tiny Island Group Could Soon Become An Oil Producer By Viktor Katona - Dec 19, 2020, 4:00 PM CST Protracted economic crises always challenge the forbearance of governments and militaries across the world when it comes to border disputes, be they maritime or onshore. The case of the Falkland Islands (called Islas Malvinas in Argentina) has been one of those odd situations when the purported hydrocarbon bounty of the place might be a ridiculous hoax that was used to hype up the political dimension of the conflict or alternatively it might be a harbinger of a yet-untapped oil and gas bonanza. In a fairly similar fashion to Brasil’s pre-salt deposits, hydrocarbons in and around the Falklands Islands can be directly linked to the breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent – the Falkland microplate drifted off to the south of what is now South America, creating several rift basins along the way. The first prospecting surveys north of the Falklands have started around 1998 when a total of six wells was drilled – despite the relatively high success rate (5 wildcats out of 6 encountered oil plays), none was deemed commercial enough. The 2nd round of appraisal works, now already based on 3D seismic data, took place between 2010 and 2012 and brought about several discoveries (Casper, Beverley etc.), most notably the Sea Lion field that has gradually become the islanders’ (and Britain’s) biggest hope in nudging all the surveying works towards commercialization. The shareholding split of the project is still not finalized after a decade of speculation about who would be brave enough to join – the Israeli Navitas Petroleum is set to buy 30% of the asset at some point next year, thus creating the following ownership structure: Premier Oil (operatorship, 40%), Rockhopper Exploration (30%) and Navitas (30%).