Hansa Hydrocarbons Ltd. (Hansa) has been provisionally awarded two new licenses in the Danish sector of the North Sea, according to a news release.

The awards remain subject to ratification by the Danish parliament.

License 7/16 covers 306.4 square kilometers (sq km) down to a depth of 1,700 meters and is situated adjacent to the German median line to the south. The exploration objectives are an extension of the Late Miocene oil play successfully appraised in 2015 with the Lille John-2 well and sidetrack by Dana Petroleum Ltd., Hansa said in the release. The Lille John discovery of light 34°-35° API oil gives support to a number of large seismic anomalies identified in similar age sandstones being oil-filled.

The license term is six years with a drill or drop decision at the end of the third year. The firm work program consists of reprocessing existing 3-D seismic data, combined with AVO and inversion studies, de-risking the identified prospectivity prior to drilling, according to the releaes. Partners on the license will be Hansa (50%, operator), Edison International S.p.a. (30%) and Nordsøfonden (20%).

License 14/16 covers 284.9 sq km and is located on the northernmost margin of the Southern Permian Basin on the western limit of the Danish offshore, bounded to the west by the U.K. median line and to the south by the German median line. Extensive in-house regional geological studies, combined with a rigorous analysis of the available 3-D seismic, support material prospectivity in Jurassic-age oil-prone stratigraphic traps on the flanks of the Mid North Sea High, the release said.

The license term is six years with a decision at the end of the second year to either acquire a new 3-D seismic survey or to drill an exploration well. The work program consists of reprocessing existing 3-D seismic data to improve the structural definition prior to taking the decision to enter the next phase of the license with the appropriate work program, according to the release. Partners on the license will be Hansa (32%), Edison International S.p.a. (48%, operator) and Nordsøfonden (20%).