Oil and gas company Hurricane Exploration said today it had returned to a prospect west of Shetland to continue drilling an exploration well.
Hurricane drilled the well at Whirlwind last autumn and said indications of oil had been observed but poor weather curtailed operations.
The company said it had now resumed work to test production and evaluate the basement-reservoir prospect, which is thought to have reserves of around 150million barrels of oil.
The drill-stem tests, expected to take about 40 days, will be carried out by the semisubmersible drilling rig WilPhoenix, owned by Awilco Drilling.
Well-management services will be provided by AGR Petroleum Services.
The operation is being funded by a share placing Hurricane carried out earlier this year, which raised £20million for the company.
Hurricane has two other prospects west of Shetland. Lancaster – drilled in 2009 and which has prospective resources of nearly 150million barrels of light oil – was flow tested last year and has the potential to produce 15,000 barrels of oil a day.
The third prospect, Typhoon, is a comparable size to Lancaster and Whirlwind but has yet to be drilled.
The company also has two discoveries west of Shetland: Strathmore, which contains an estimated 213million barrels of “sticky” oil in place and Tempest, a heavy-oil find overlying Typhoon and containing an estimated 1billion-plus barrels
Hurricane, which was set up in 2005, employs 12 people and has a small office in Aberdeen.