Under agreements signed on 11th August 2005 (“the Agreements”) between Northern’s wholly owned Netherlands subsidiary, NP Netherlands B.V. (“NPN”) and Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij B.V. (“NAM”), a company jointly owned by Shell and ExxonMobil, NPN has, after a period of due diligence to permit a full technical review of the licences held by NAM, exercised various options.

Undeveloped Discoveries:

The exercise of these three options brings the number of discoveries that NPN has committed to under the Agreements to five following the earlier exercise of the options over the Geesbrug and Ottoland discoveries as announced on 12th August 2005.

NAM will now arrange the licence split and assignment of its participating interest in the three committed discoveries to NPN who will immediately assume operating responsibility after receipt of government approvals. The discoveries are in two onshore part-areas within the Drenthe Licence and the Andell II Licence, which is close to the Papekop discovery for which the Netherlands Mining Council (“Mijnraad”) has recommended the award of a production licence to NPN.

Exploration Options:

Under the Agreements, NPN will also farm-in to an onshore exploration part-area, in the Andel II Licence, and has agreed a two month extension to its option with NAM on the Schagen prospect during which time NPN will complete its due diligence. NPN will earn 50% of NAM’s interests by drilling and covering the combined NAM and NPN expenses of one exploration well in each part-area and will subject to Government consent assume operatorship of the Andel II exploration part-area. The Agreements provide for NPN to recover all dry hole costs out of the pre-tax revenues from future discoveries and share the profits from the jointly held stakes with NAM on an equal basis.

NPN estimates the unrisked gross in-place volumes of the identified oil and gas prospects within the Andel II part area to be between 55 and 130 billion cubic feet of gas and 62 and 148 million barrels of oil. NPN estimates unrisked gross in-place volumes of gas in the remaining option to be between 200 and 270 billion cubic feet.

Derek Musgrove, Managing Director of Northern, commented:

“We have now committed to develop five of NAM’s oil and gas discoveries in the Netherlands alongside our Papekop project. The end of the process we are now embarking upon will truly transform Northern into a significant producer of oil, gas and electricity that is able to sustain growth out of cash flow.”

For further details please contact:

Northern Petroleum Plc
Chris Foss, Finance Director
Tel: 020 7743 6080

Investec
Michael Ansell
Tel: 020 7597 5000

Chris Roberts/Ben Simons
Hansard Communications
020 7245 1100