Dana Petroleum announced it has made an oil discovery in the Moray Firth following the drilling of the Liberator exploration well.
The oil find comes just days after the Aberdeen-headquartered firm discovered gas in the Pharos prospect, 35 miles north-east of the Yorkshire coast.
Korean-owned Dana is the sole operator of the Liberator prospect, around 50 miles from the Moray coast.
The company won the field in the Department for Energy and Climate Change’s record breaking 27th licensing round last year.
The firm said the find was nearby to the mature, Chevron-operated Captain field, in which Dana has a 15% interest, although it is adjacent to the Blake oil field, owned by Talisman and operated by BG Group.
In a statement the firm said: “Detailed evaluation of the discovery will now be undertaken to determine the volume of discovered oil and to design an appraisal programme.”
Paul Griffin, Dana’s UK managing director said: “This is the second North Sea discovery that Dana has made within the last month, and our fifth discovery in the last three years.
“The discovery lies close to existing infrastructure and we will now undertake further evaluation work to determine its commercial potential.”
The well was drilled by the Ocean Nomad, leased from Diamond Offshore and managed by Senergy.
Dana said the rig will now return to the northern North Sea for further operations on its “flagship” Western Isles development.
Western Isles is a £1billion development project which is exploiting two discovered oil fields, called Harris and Barra, located 100miles east of the Shetlands and seven miles west of the Tern field.
Recently Ohkyeu Baek, chief strategy officer for Dana’s owners, the Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC), said its £1.7billion deal to acquire the company in 2010 was paying off for the South Korean parents.
He said Dana’s oil production had jumped by 25% since the takeover, with output from Dana’s producing assets now making up nearly one-quarter of KNOC’s total of around 240,000 barrels per day.
By the end of last year the value of Dana’s assets had jumped by more than 55% since 2010, to more than £2.9billion, while KNOC has taken dividends of around £124million.
Dana aims to double its daily oil production to as many as 100,000 barrels by 2016.