Providence Resources - TOR in Huston - Barryroe mentioned - Providence Resources has seen heightened...

Providence Resources has seen heightened interest in recent months from international oil companies in Ireland’s offshore sector, giving the Irish junior renewed hope of executing long-planned farm-outs.
“There is a level of increased interest over the last three months ... with people trying to position themselves for future opportunities to get discovery resources,” chief executive Tony O’Reilly said.

The company has been trying for some time to offload some of its 80% operated stake in the Barryroe gas discovery as it looks for a carry on appraisal drilling.

“We have had so many false dawns – we have had deals with companies who couldn’t come up with the money...There seems to be a lot more movement, so we hope in the next few months we will be able to say more about it.

“There is one major who is particularly interested but right now the constituent players are independents or private equity-backed companies, because all the big boys have just slashed (spending),” O’Reilly told Upstream on the sidelines of the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston.

“The market seems to be taking a more positive view about the oil price and people are saying ‘where are we going to put our money to work?’ And Ireland is a pretty good place to do it.”