Dana Petroleum suffered hefty losses during 2014, it emerged yesterday.
The firm, which has oil and gas exploration and production operations in the UK, Egypt, Norway, the Netherlands and Africa, has posted pre-tax losses of £462.5million on revenue of £682.4million.
Dana’s plunge into the red came amid a flurry of top management departures and followed profits of £145million the year before, when revenue topped £1billion.
Highlighting a “year of considerable change” in 2014 accounts lodged at Companies House, Korean -owned Dana said a significant restructure of the business took place against a backdrop of operational challenges, particularly in the UK, and a sharp drop in oil prices.
It added: “The reduced price environment has resulted in a reduced and more focused exploration strategy for the next few years. This strategy will be continually re-evaluated.”
Dana embarked on an active drilling programme in 2014, with a total of 15 exploration and appraisal wells and two sidetracks completed in the year.
“This yielded five potentially commercial successes, two non-commercial successes and eight dry wells,”, the firm said.
Last month, Dana said it was playing “the long game” on its flagship Western Isles project in the UK North sea after confirming cost overruns had hit £257million.
First oil from the development has been pushed back until late 2017 after the price tag ballooned to £1.3billion.
In a review of 2014 in its accounts, Dana said: “Significant progress was made on the group’s principle development project, Western Isles.
“This progress was made despite…major delays in the engineering workscope which have resulted in the board approving a reset of the project timeline and cost estimate.”
A floating production, storage and offloading facility (FPSO) being built for the development is revolutionary for the North Sea. It is believed to be the first FPSO destined for the UK that will have been constructed entirely in China.
Dana’s daily oil and gas production fell to 41,637 barrels of oil equivalent (boe) last year, from 46,891 boe in 2013.
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