Operations Update

For immediate release 20 December 2010

Operations Update

Desire Petroleum plc (DES:AIM) the oil and gas company wholly focussed on the North Falkland Basin, wishes to provide the following operations update.

Dawn / Jacinta Spud

The Company is pleased to advise that the Dawn/Jacinta 25/5-1 well was spudded at 14.40 hrs (GMT) on 18th December 2010.

The well is located in Tranche I in which Desire has a 100% interest.

The well has targets at two levels. The Jacinta prospect is a Lower Cretaceous stratigraphic sand pinch out trap with a target depth of around 1,000 metres. The deeper Dawn prospect is a 3-way dip, fault bounded closure with a target depth of around 1,350 metres.

The total depth of the well is planned to be around 1,670 metres and is expected to take 30 days to complete.

Announcements will be made once logging is complete at each of the targets or as appropriate.

Ocean Guardian

After the Dawn/Jacinta well, it is planned that Rockhopper Exploration ("Rockhopper") will take the rig for 1 or 2 slots before the rig returns to Desire to drill a well at a location still to be decided. A further announcement will be made on the rig movements once details have been finalized.

3D Seismic Activity

The 3D seismic vessel Polarcus Nadia has commenced operations on the new 3D seismic programme in the North Falkland Basin in a joint survey with Rockhopper. Operations are expected to be complete by the end of April 2011. The Desire part of the programme will result in full 3D seismic coverage over the prospective East Flank Play Fairway on Desire acreage. Desire estimates that only circa 40% of this play is currently covered by 3D data within the Desire operated licences. The new 3D seismic is required to identify and map the target sands in this play. The priority area, where operations have started, is in the north east of Tranche D.

The existing 3D survey will be reprocessed and merged with the new data to provide consistent, high quality 3D data over all of the play fairway on Desire acreage.

The final merged data are expected to be available for interpretation during Q3 2011.

For further information please contact: