Shares of oil and gas firm i3 Energy soared almost 50% on Tuesday after it announced it discovered around 200 million barrels of oil in its Serenity prospect in the UK North Sea.

i3 Energy said it plans to coordinate the outer Moray Firth development with Repsol Sinopec Resources UK, which operates the neighboring Tain field, i3 said on Tuesday. 

i3 Energy CEO Majid Shafiq said: “The discovery of the Serenity oilfield, a potentially very large oil resource, is a transformational event for i3 Energy plc. 

“We now have proven oil in a second structure on our licenses.

“It is the culmination of three years of detailed geological and reservoir analysis and validates our regional model for the Liberator and Serenity oilfields and neighboring structures.

“We will now integrate data from the 13/23c-10 well into our geological modelling as we develop an appraisal and development plan for Serenity, which we believe is connected to the undeveloped Tain oilfield. 

“This result also adds confidence to our revised mapping of the Liberator field, which utilises the same reprocessed seismic dataset now used to map the Serenity field, and integrates data from the recently drilled 13/23c-9 Liberator well.

“We now look forward to returning to Liberator where we’ll continue the necessary drilling operations to progress that field towards development.”