Hurricane Energy keeping fingers crossed for ‘significant’ resource upgrade at Lancaster

Hurricane Energy, a UK-company working to bring online one of the largest undeveloped fields in the UK North Sea – the Lancaster – has said that the field could be much bigger that initially estimated.

This was said by the company’s CEO Robert Trice, who said Thursday that the first well showed the Lancaster could be “greater than the 200 million barrel 2C case currently estimated.”

The company will need to complete an appraisal well to be sure.

“Drilling of the Horizontal Sidetrack Well is underway and we look forward to reporting results of this later in the fourth quarter,” Trice said.

The well is being drilled using the Transocean Spitsberger semi-submersible drilling rig.

Trice said that the company was updating its resource model prior to producing an updated CPR and, as such, “we are delighted that wireline and well test data indicated that no pressure barriers were detected in the reservoir, and that wireline samples of oil have been recovered to surface from deeper than our minimum oil down to case.”

Once these data are fully evaluated we anticipate a significant resource upgrade of the Lancaster reservoir, he added.

The field, located West of Shetland, is expected to be developed using a floating production storage and offloading unit (FPSO).

Presenting its operational update, Hurricane said it completed an initial seabed and environmental survey of areas adjacent to Lancaster and Lincoln which might be required for FPSO moorings and otherwise to bring its seabed surveys up to date.

During the second half of the year the company said it would continue to work with FPSO and subsea production facility providers to refine the development in order to meet FID during H1 2017.

To bring the field online, Hurricane will need to either raise additional cash and/or farm down its equity in Lancaster and its other assets.

In June 2016, Hurricane temporarily suspended farm-out discussions until completion of the Lancaster wells and subsequent analysis.

“We expect that the data room will be re-opened by the end of the year once all the data from the drilling campaign has been analysed,” Hurricane said on Thursday.

Offshore Energy Today Staff