Orcadian Energy (AIM:ORCA), the North Sea focused oil and gas exploration and development company, has begun the Assessment Phase for its Earlham and Orwell gas fields on licence P2680, which it wholly owns.
The company's preferred concept pairs an offshore power station fitted with carbon capture with a co-located data centre, rather than exporting gas via pipeline.
Earlham's gas is 49% carbon dioxide, making conventional export unattractive; Orcadian instead plans to generate power at the field and reinject the captured carbon dioxide into the reservoir to support pressure and recovery.
The power station could supply around 200MW of electrical load to an adjacent data centre hall, with Orcadian expecting eventual developers to come from hyperscalers such as Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft, or specialist neo-scalers including CoreWeave and Nebius.
Orcadian estimates Earlham holds 114 billion cubic feet (bcf) of methane resource, with a further 31 bcf recoverable from the depleted Orwell field.
The company is setting up a new subsidiary, Earlham Gigagrid, to incubate the project, and intends to assign its P2680 interest to a Gigagrid subsidiary pending regulatory approval.
Separately, Orcadian's subsidiary has agreed a deferred repayment schedule with The Independent Power Corporation for approximately £1.34 million owed as of 30 June, now repayable by 31 December 2027 at 8.5% annual interest, secured against its P2244 and P2680 licence interests.
"This development concept for Earlham... can be transformational for the value of our P2680 licence," said chief executive Steve Brown.
Progress now depends on the North Sea Transition Authority approving the licence assignment and issuing a Letter of No Objection to the selected development concept.
