First Oil at Lancaster

Hurricane Energy, a North Sea oil company that specialises in a particular type of “fractured basement” rock formation, has reached a significant milestone with the first oil produced from its Lancaster field, located west of the Shetland islands.

The company said on Wednesday that it had completed a 72-hour production test of two wells at the field on June 4.

During that time, both wells maintained a production rate of 20,000 barrels of oil per day, although the company will take a phased approach to the first six months of full production. The company plans to produce an average of 9,000 barrels/day for the first three months and 13,000/day for the following three. After that, the two wells combined are expected to produce at an average rate of 17,000 barrels/day.

Hurricane was founded in 2004 by Robert Trice with the aim of specialising in fractured basement reservoirs in UK waters — fissures in hard rock such as granite, which lies below softer sedimentary sandstone from where most other North Sea resources have been recovered.

Mr Trice said on Wednesday: “Lancaster is the UK’s first producing fractured basement field and the fact that Hurricane has delivered this industry milestone on time and within budget is an incredible achievement.”

Hurricane’s biggest shareholder is the private equity firm Kerogen Capital.

Victoria McCulloch, analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said the announcement on Wednesday marked “another step forward in demonstrating the scale and deliverability of the fractured basement play in the UK North Sea on the Lancaster licence”.

She added: “We anticipate nine to 12 months of production data from now is required in order to fully understand the scale of the reservoir and sustainability of production.”