China's CNOOC Iceland ehf granted dragon zone license

Dreki Area South of Jan Mayen

licencing area outlined in red - Iceland

Iceland’s national energy authority Orkustofnun has granted a new offshore licence to CNOOC Iceland ehf. as operator with 60 % share, Eykon Energy ehf with 15 % share and Petoro Iceland AS with 25 % share.

The Jan Mayen Ridge, including the part covered by the northern Dreki area, is thought to have potential for hydrocarbon accumulations because of its geological similarity to hydrocarbon basins which were its next door neighbours prior to the opening of the northeast Atlantic ocean basin. The basins in question are the Jameson Land Basin onshore East Greenland, where oil is known to have been generated and preserved in sandstone bodies, and basins offshore western Norway, Shetland and in the North Sea, where oil and gas has been discovered in commercial quantities.

[August 9 2013]

 08/05/2013

Undiscovered recoverable resources on the Norwegian Continental Shelf are an estimated 935 million to 5,420 million standard cu m of oil equivalent (scmoe), the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate estimated last month. The estimate embraces the entire NCS except for a new area in the northeastern Barents Sea acquired under a recent maritime delimitation treaty between Norway and Russia. The undiscovered recoverable average volume of 2,980 million scmoe is 410 million higher than the previous NPD estimate in 2011.

In a  statement at a press conference in Oslo as the Labor Party started its the run for the elections, the party proposed that all oil and gas in the unopened areas in the Barents Sea and around Jan Mayen and Svalbard be left untouched "for years to come" meaning that Norwegian government will not invest in companies involved in oil, coal, shale and tar sands and that the Fund will not invest in companies that are labeled as climate offenders .

[July 9] 
Chinese oil company CNOOC International Ltd. will participate in the application by Icelandic company Eykon Energy to the National Energy Authority of Iceland (NEA), Orkustofnun, in the second round of licensing for the Dragon Zone (Drekasvæði), as stated on the agency’s website.
Norway has the right to a 25 percent participation in all licenses granted in the area according to a 1981 agreement between Norway and Iceland.

In January, the first two licenses were issued, one to Faroe Petroleum Norge AS as an operator with a 67.5 percent share, Íslenskt Kolvetni ehf. with a 7.5 percent share and Petoro Iceland with a 25 percent share and the other to Valiant Petroleum ehf. as an operator with a 56.25 percent share, Kolvetni ehf. with a 18.75 percent share and Petoro Iceland AS with a 25 percent share.   Petoro Iceland AS, is a daughter company of Norwegian state oil company Petoro, was granted two licenses in the area between Iceland and Jan Mayen.
 Oil majors including Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and Total , as well as London-listed Tullow Oil , Sweden's Lundin Petroleum, Norway's Det norske and Japan's Idemitsu, have bought seismic data on potential oil and gas resources off Jan Mayen island in the Arctic, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate. has gathered since 2011.
The NPD mapped out the sea bed around Jan Mayen island, situated to the east of Greenland and north of Iceland, and thinks it could contain some 566 million barrels of oil equivalent in reserves.