The UK North Sea arm of Middle East energy firm Taqa cuts its overheads by 30% during 2015 as the industry waged war on costs.
Annual results from the group yesterday showed an efficiency drive across its global business has also seen 900 jobs axed – about 25% of the total workforce – since 2014.
Taqa now has less than half the number of people working in its Abu Dhabi headquarters than it did two years ago, while its oil and gas teams around the world are 32% leaner.
UK managing director Pete Jones said: “2015 was undoubtedly a difficult year for the industry, but we faced up to the economic challenges and reduced our overall costs by 30%.
“Restructuring our UK offshore organisation to put more Taqa staff in key leadership positions was a fundamental step in order to refine our approach and ensure our long-term success.”
Taqa’s daily production from the UK North Sea last year averaged 56,600 barrels of oil equivalent (boe), down from 61,400 in 2014.
This year’s output will be substantially boosted by the Cladhan discovery, Taqa’s largest operated UK field to date, which came on stream in December.
Cladhan, about 225 miles north-east of Aberdeen, is believed to have about 10.2million barrels of proven plus probable reserves.
Taqa said its “disciplined and focused approach” to costs helped reduce net general and administrative costs and operational expenditure per barrel by 18% in the UK North Sea.
“In addition our platform uptime improved upon 2014 performance, with 87% reliability,” Mr Jones added.
The company said 2015 group production remained “robust” at 145,300 boe per day, down by 8.6% on 2014, despite it having slashed capital expenditure by 58% since 2013.
Net losses narrowed to £340.4million last year, from £567.4million in 2014, while lower commodity prices reduced revenue by 29% to £3.65billion.
Chief operating officer Edward LaFehr said: “We also achieved record high production for our power and water business.
“We exceeded all of our internal targets, while shifting to a leaner and more efficient organisation worldwide.
“Our business transformation continues to build momentum and has positioned us well to deliver benefits and take advantage of markets as prices recover.”
In the UK, Taqa operates five platforms producing from 13 fields spread across the northern and central North Sea. The group also has stakes in fields operated by others in the central North Sea.
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