Northern Petroleum Plc is pleased to announce that following a statement by the Rt Hon Mike O’Brien, Energy Minister, subsidiaries of the Company have been offered five licences in the 12th Landward licensing round, all of which will be operated by the relevant Northern subsidiary. The offered licences are as follows:

UK ONSHORE - 12th LANDWARD LICENSING ROUND OFFERS

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SZ 28, SZ38, SZ39, SZ49

This Licence (in which Northern has a net beneficial interest of 66.125%) is in the Solent and covers the western flank of the large prospect in the Sherwood Sandstone to be tested by the Sandhills-2 and Bouldnor Copse-1 wells on existing acreage. Importantly, this ensures that Northern now holds major licence interests in the entire prospect as the managing party. Northern believes that the prospect has potential recoverable reserve targets of 20-30 million barrels in the Great Oolite and 50-200 million barrels from the Sherwood sandstones.

SZ68

This Licence (in which Northern has a net beneficial interest of 60.75%) is to the east of Northern’s PEDL 098 on the Isle of Wight and covers an eastern extension of a structural high trend to be drilled by Sandhills-2. As the trend continues, a series of additional independent prospects are contained within PEDL 098 with potential targets in the Great Oolite formation and possibly within the Permo-Triassic formations.

SU70

The Licence (in which Northern has a net beneficial interest of 50%) is situated primarily to the east of Havant and contains two prospects within the Great Oolite as the primary targets. The Horndean oilfield in which Northern has a 10% interest, situated structurally down dip to the north and full to spill point, is 3 km distant.

TQ00, TQ01, TQ10, TQ11

This Licence (in which Northern has a net beneficial interest of 50%) is located in the south Weald Basin and surrounds the Storrington oilfield which is producing from the Great Oolite formation. A number of earlier exploration wells contained oil and gas within the Great Oolite that were not tested at the time of drilling. In addition attractive undrilled prospects are also mapped within the licence.

TQ45, TQ55, TQ65

The Licence (in which Northern has a net beneficial interest of 33.34%) covers the western extension of the Northern operated PEDL 112 in Kent where, after using seismic data to reconstruct the tectonic history of this sector of the Weald Basin, a prospect trend has been mapped being the first structures available to receive oil migrating north eastward up-dip during the period of oil generation. The area is to the east of the currently producing Palmers Wood oilfield and the Bletchingley gasfield and the prospects are on trend with these fields and structurally similar. The primary reservoir objectives are in the Upper Jurassic sandstone formations.

Derek Musgrove, Managing Director of Northern, stated,

“These offers are of considerable value to Northern. These onshore offers have been selected as a result of our past work and contain mapped low risk prospects and leads which can be pursued immediately to maintain the impetus which commences with our Isle of Wight drilling programme. Only the Kent offer is part of a more exploration orientated programme but it nevertheless contains several recognised leads which Northern wishes to re-model.”

For further information please contact:

Derek Musgrove
Managing Director, Northern Petroleum Plc
Tel. 020 7743 6080

Chris Roberts / Ben Simons
Hansard Communications
Tel. 020 7245 1100