Oil and gas explorer Hurricane Energy has spudded a well in the Warwick Deep, west of Shetland, using the Transocean Leader rig.
Warwick Deep, in UK waters, is the first in a three-well programme on Hurricane's Lincoln and Warwick assets known as the Greater Warwick Area. Hurricane has a 50% interest following Spirit Energy's farm-in to the licences in September 2018.
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Spirit Energy agreed to stump up £139 million to cover the cost of the exploration, which targets two billion barrels of oil, as part of a deal that saw it acquire 50% of Greater Warwick.
Hurricane, established to discover, appraise and develop hydrocarbons resources in naturally fractured basement reservoirs, provided the update in its 2018 results announcement, which showed pre-tax losses of £46.6 million, widening from a deficit of £5.3 million in 2017.
The Lancaster field (100%) is Hurricane's most appraised asset, with five wells drilled by the company to date. It has 2P reserves and 2C contingent resources of 523 million stock tank barrels of oil.
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The company is currently proceeding towards the first phase of development of Lancaster, an Early Production System which will be the UK's first basement field development.
It involves a two well tie-back to the Aoka Mizu FPSO and is expected to initially produce 17,000 barrels of oil per day (gross production of 20,000 bopd with assumed operating efficiency of 85% following ramp-up). First oil is targeted for the first half of 2019.
