A New Addington brewery has been given the unusual accolade of having a gas field named after them.
The Cronx Brewery, based in Vulcan Way, has only been going for two years but now their name is going global.
Last week Independent Oil and Gas Plc bought a new field in the North Sea and have renamed the field Cronx.
It is expected that the field, which could produce the equivalent of 3.5 million barrels of oil, could be producing by 2016.
Peter Young, IOG’s Chief Financial Officer and an avid Crystal Palace fan came up with the idea after meeting one of the brewers Simon Dale at a Palace game.
All North Sea oil and gas companies need to have a naming convention for their fields and IOG decided on breweries. All of IOG’s northern North Sea fields are named after northern breweries, for example Theakston, and its southern North Sea fields are named after Southern breweries, for example Cronx.
Mr Young said the naming procedure is not as flippant as it seems with a few parallels between the fermenting and brewing process and oil and gas production and refining.
The acquisition of the field, and naming it after Croydon’s first brewery in 50 years, obviously went down well with share prices rising in IOG by 9.5 per cent.
Mr Young said: "I’m a big fan of Cronx ale and met Simon Dale at a Crystal Palace game recently and he liked the idea, although I couldn’t give him any details about the field in question at the time as the acquisition of the Cronx gas field was only finalised on Tuesday night.
"It’s actually the first field that IOG will operate and we plan to drill a well later this year, so this is a big deal for us.
"The Cronx brewery is an ambitious young business and we believe there are good parallels with IOG."
Mark Russell, one of the Cronx brewers, said he was pleasantly surprised that the Cronx brand had expanded into the oil and gas business.
He said: "The naming of the gas field came totally out of the blue and really surprised us, it’s a great opportunity and something you can’t turn down really.
"We are always trying to spread the name of the brewery and the affectionate term for our home town as far and as wide as possible.
"Having somebody want to name a gas field after us is certainly one way to get our brand global."
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