AIM-listed Orcadian has entered into a non-exclusive, joint development agreement (the 'Agreement') with an American developer of offshore data centre infrastructure (the 'Partner').
The Partner describes itself as an integrated infrastructure owner and compute operator. Its strategy is to develop the offshore compute platform, own or finance the compute hardware, and sell contracted compute capacity to customers.
The Agreement establishes a 90-day process, commencing on the date of this announcement, to enable due diligence, commercial validation and negotiation of a definitive Earlham and Orwell energy-to-compute transaction. Neither party is obliged to sign, finance or complete the definitive transaction, unless and until separate definitive agreements are executed. The Agreement includes an option for the Partner to secure exclusivity upon the payment of a fee, to be agreed. No consideration was paid by either party on entry into the Agreement.
The Earlham Gigagrid concept provides power and infrastructure to support the deployment of the Partner’s technology, disconnected from the UK grid, and which is designed to minimise Scope 3 emissions. The Directors believe the concept has the potential to deliver competitive power costs, subject to the validation work to be undertaken during the 90-day period.
Earlham and Orwell have estimated 2C contingent resources of 145 Bcf, as at 1/1/2026, and the Company intends to evaluate a range of development scenarios that are necessary to support the build-out of the offshore compute capacity. These are internally generated estimates prepared using SPE-PRMS categorizations, comprising 114 Bcf at Earlham and 31 Bcf at Orwell, and have not been independently verified. The company intends to commission a competent person’s report during the 90-day period.
If agreed and exercised, exclusivity would run until 1 March 2027 and would restrict the Company from granting competing rights over Earlham, Orwell or the P2680 licence during that period and would require the Company to procure the termination of ongoing discussions with third parties concerning a competing transaction. Either party may terminate the Agreement for convenience on 10 business days’ notice.
The Company will provide further updates in due course.
Steve Brown, Orcadian CEO, said:
'We are delighted to be working with our new partner to design a scheme to utilise the gas resources in our licence to enable the development of an offshore data centre of real scale in UK waters.
'Our partner has developed a new approach to the deployment of compute in the offshore setting and would be a natural customer for the power that the Earlham Gigagrid concept can generate.'
Source: Orcadian Energy
