Oil companies are interested in restarting the hunt for oil and gas in the scarcely explored seas off the Faroe Islands neighbouring the more mature UK North Sea, the head of the Faroese Geological Survey said.
No economically viable discoveries have been made on the Faroese shelf but the tiny nation hopes to entice energy firms to restart exploration as it shows them new geological data in London on Wednesday.
“Oil firms have in many ways shown interest. We are having meetings, they buy data from us, visit us on the Faroe Islands … So there is an interest and they are looking at the possibilities,” survey director Niels Christian Nolsoe said.
He declined to identify any of the companies but said bigger firms could put up the necessary cash, adding that companies present in the UK Shetland region also might be interested.
The seabed is mostly covered by thick basalt layers, which make the Faroese offshore areas difficult to explore despite promising geological and seismic surveys.