Premier Oil announced yesterday that it had hooked up the floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel for its Catcher North Sea development.
It comes as the operator zeroes in on first oil, which is expected before the end of the year.
Read more about that here.
First oil from the Catcher area is scheduled for December.
It was original planned for 2014, having been given the go-ahead.
When fully completed, the development west of the Elgin Franklin will be made up of 20 subsea wells which will be tied back to the FPSO, which has a processing capacity of 60,000 barrels per day.
Catcher was discovered in August 2010 but it was not until a series of acquisitions that it came into the control of Premier Oil.
Premier got an interest in the area in 2009 with its acquisition of Oilexco and then became the operator in 2012 when it agreed the terms of a takeover of Encore Oil.
To read about the takeovers, click here.
The tendering process for the FPSO started back in 2013.
A rocky couple of years followed due to the oil price crash and Premier’s refinancing of its debt pile.
The debt refinancing was completed earlier this year.
And following on from that, Premier chief executive Tony Durrant expressed his hope that Catcher would signal a change of fortune.