Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Question 119: To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the current estimate in billions of barrels of oil equivalent of the extent of the oil and gas deposits lying off the coast in Irish waters and the current value at 2011 world prices of these oil and gas deposits lying offshore around the Irish coast. [8733/11]

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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The only commercial discoveries of natural gas made in the Irish offshore are the three producing fields in the Kinsale area, along with the Corrib Gas Field which is currently being developed. To date, there have been no commercial discoveries of oil in the Irish offshore.

Recent petroleum systems assessment for the offshore frontier basins west of Ireland indicate a yet-to-find reserve potential in the order of 10 billion barrels of oil equivalent. This divides roughly into 6.5 billion barrels of oil and 20 trillion cubic feet of gas. I must however stress that these figures only represent "potential" reserves, or the reserves that might be present based on geological criteria and regional comparisons, and that they have not been discovered. Extensive exploration, including the drilling of hundreds of exploration wells, would be necessary in order to test the general accuracy of this estimate. There is little sense in speculating as to the potential value of something that has not yet been proven to exist.