DETERMINED oil company bosses say that they haven’t given up hope of drilling into a vast oil reservoir buried under thousands of homes in Hedge End, writes Peter Law.

Northern Petroleum is continuing to scour for sites surrounding the leafy Hampshire village to tap into the potential multi-million-pound ‘black gold’ jackpot.

The revelation comes after the exploration firm last month submitted a planning application to build an oil rig near Leigh Park, in Havant.

If approved by H a m p s h i r e County Council, the 108ft rig would rise up on a two-acre site off Hulbert Road, near the B&Q superstore, and would operate for a month.

While it isn’t known how much, if any, oil lies beneath Havant, the Hedge End reserve contains an estimated 50 million barrels.

The oil field lies near junction seven of the M27, but has remained untouched since it was discovered in 1988.

The Daily Echo revealed last April that Northern Petroleum was in lengthy negations with a local private landowner to secure a lease to drill up to three wells.

The talks have since collapsed, along with oil prices, but the firm yesterday said that it was still determined to push ahead.

Graham Heard, Northern Petroleum’s exploration and technical director, said: “Hedge End is an existing discovery, we know there is oil down there. The thing with Havant is that it is an exploration well. We have no concept as to whether or not there is any oil out there.

“We are still in the process of getting ourselves to a position of having any form of agreement with any landowner for any sites at all in that area.

“As far as we are concerned we are interested in appraising a discovery which was made some two decades ago, but progress towards getting that to happen is a little more difficult.

“We haven’t really made the progress we would have hoped, but we haven’t given up and will continue to work at it.”

The latest d eve l o p m e n t comes almost four years after the firm’s first attempt to drill for oil on a county council-owned field, off Woodhouse Lane, was scuppered by a huge public outcry.

County council leader Ken Thornber blocked the bid amid fears over the impact it could have on nearby homes and a primary school located just 300m away.

Mr Heard said that the search for a site had now been extended to the less populated land to the north of Hedge End.

If the Havant planning application is approved, Northern Petroleum would have up to three years to build the rig.