Horse Hill Developments

This article is part of the Spinwatch Fracking Portal and project

Horse Hill Developments Ltd (“HHDL”) was set up in 2014 to drill and develop an exploratory oil and gas well at Horse Hill, a picturesque patch of Surrey countryside located in licence PEDL 137 in the Weald Basin, a few miles north of Gatwick airport in the UK.

Activities

The firm's original director David Lenigas said in 2014 that the site could yield 80 million barrels of oil and 160 billion cubic feet of gas, worth £2 billion. Esso drilled this same site back in the 1960s, finding oil but in uncommercial quantities. According to their website:

HHDL originally drilled the Horse Hill-1 (HH-1) oil discovery well in 2014 and followed with flow testing in February and March 2016. HH-1 tested at a commercial aggregate stable dry oil rate of 1,688 barrels of oil per day from the Portland and two Kimmeridge Limestone reservoir horizons. The 2018 flow test programme follows the granting of planning permission by Surrey County Council in November 2017 and the subsequent discharge of their pre-commencement planning conditions in March 2018. Environment Agency approval for the full programme was granted in September 2017.

No fracking claim

David Lenigas insisted in October 2014 that he would not use fracking on the site.

I am a landowner and the farmer as well in the UK. I would not want fracking on my land and I certainly would not be doing fracking in Horley. I can absolutely guarantee that... I have publicly stated in an open forum that there will be no fracking at the Horse Hill site.

The company's website in 2018 reaffirms this statement.

the well does NOT require the use of the unconventional oil-field process of massive hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as “fracking”.

People

Former chairman David Lenigas is an Australian businessman turned serial entrepreneur. In October 2014 the Financial Times reported that a directors’ disclosure issued in 2013 by Inspirit Energy, an innovative energy technology firm where Lenigas is chairman, 'indicated he had sat on 173 company boards during the previous five years.

The list has been severely pruned more recently – and in ways that surprised many of his followers. At the end of August he resigned as chairman of the eponymous Leni Gas & Oil. It’s not often that a director’s departure necessitates a change of company name, but this Trinidadian oil producer, which spent years as a “sub-penny dreadful” before taking off this spring, will henceforth be known simply as LGO.

... Mr Lenigas took the helm at Tiny Rowland’s Lonrho conglomerate back in 2006 at a point when the business had dwindled to just one asset – the Cardoso hotel in Maputo. He rebuilt it as an Africa-focused agri-business, but in subsequently selling the company to Swiss investors last year, he fell out badly with the new owners in a row that extended to another Lenigas venture, African low-cost airline Fastjet. Right now, aside from Horse Hill, Mr Lenigas’ interests are focused on Inspirit, the energy company, and also Rare Earth Minerals, with a large interest in a potentially huge lithium deposit in Mexico.

Lenigas stepped down from the board in 2015, and was replaced by Stephen Sanderson.

Partners

• As of June 2019 UKOG holds a 77.9% stake in Horse Hill Developments Ltd, and a 50.635% interest in the Horse Hill field.
• Magellan Petroleum Corporation
• Alba Mineral Resources owns five per cent of Horse Hill Developments Ltd

Affiliations

• Lenigas is a former managing director of Asia Energy

Contact

Address: The Broadgate Tower

8th Floor, 20 Primrose Street

London EC2A 2EW, United Kingdom

Website: http://www.horsehilldevelopments.co.uk/

Resources

• Paul Murphy, Surrey oil hunt picks up where Esso let go, ft.com, October 5, 2014 2:03 pm