Surrey County Council has approved planning permission for a new programme of drilling at the Horse Hill oil field located in the vicinity of Gatwick airport.
A group of oil companies are now cleared to advance two new wells along with a long term testing programme which will determine the commercial merits of the discovery.
READ: Horse Hill follow ups Lidsey and Broadford Bridge have shown promise but there’s still a lot more to do
Specifically, the tests aim to follow up the prior Horse Hill well success which saw some 1,365 barrels of oil per day flow in aggregate from a number of hydrocarbon intervals.
The approval is a boon for the UK oil firms that are invested in the project - including UK Oil & Gas Investments PLC (LON:UKOG, Solo Oil PLC (LON:SOLO) and Doriemus PLC (LON:DOR).
UKOG and Solo Oil shares each moved slightly higher immediately after Surrey County Council approved planning permission at a committee meeting (which was livestreamed by the council).
The listed oil firms are all invested in the Horse Hill Development Limited (HHDL) vehicle, which owns a 65% stake in the asset.
READ: Solo Oil: Horse Hill gets green-light from Environment Agency
Last month, the Environment Agency approved the proposed work programme and the project is subject to regulation from the UK Oil & Gas Authority.
Horse Hill and other projects in the UK Weald basin, such as UKOG's Broadford Bridge project, is a naturally fractured oil play. The approved programmes do not include the use of hydraulic fracturing (commonly referred to as 'fracking').