Approval has been granted to extend the life of an oil field near Alton.

Humbly Grove Energy Limited submitted 11 planning applications to Hampshire County Council to extend the life of the Humbly Grove Oilfield plant in Lasham.

The extension will allow the continuous extraction of about 52,000 barrels of oil per year until 2055.

One of the approved applications includes the installation of a new 1,500-barrel oil storage tank, pump, and bunding at the Weston Common Gathering Station (WCGS).

The WCGS was initially set up to collect and stabilise oil, with the capability to transport it by road or pipeline to the now-defunct Rail Export Facility in Holybourne.

At the regulatory committee on July 9, Cllr David Harrison said that transporting oil via existing railway lines would be significantly better than using thousands of tankers for the “sake of easing road congestion” and for the environment.

The site development plan confirmed that there are 1,568,375 barrels of oil remaining in the reservoir, which can be extracted at an average of roughly 52,000 barrels per year.

Natural gas and oil have been produced at the site since the discovery of mineral reserves in the early 1980s.

Since then, the field has produced more than six million barrels of oil, and forecasts indicate it could produce an additional 1.5 million barrels.

In 2005, the gas cap of the now-depleted reservoir was tapped, leading to the installation of infrastructure that transformed it into one of the largest gas storage facilities in the UK.