Talisman Energy said yesterday it was making good progress towards producing oil from three UK central North Sea assets.
The Canadian oil and gas operator said Auk North was on schedule for first oil in 2011, Auk South was expected to come on stream the following year, while Burghley had first oil planned for the fourth quarter of 2010.
Talisman Energy (UK) senior vice-president John Forrest said: “We continue to make good progress with our projects and we are also making significant strides towards our aim of building a UK business with long-term, sustainable levels of production.”
The UK business operates from headquarters in Aberdeen.
It employs about 2,400 staff and contractors in its UK business, with 11 offshore installations and one oil terminal at Flotta in Orkney. The workforce split is about 700 onshore and 1,700 offshore.
Talisman chief executive John Manzoni said after the company reported results for the second quarter of 2010: “Our North Sea operations saw extensive planned maintenance shutdowns, which affected volumes by 27,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) relative to the first quarter.”
Of this, 18,000boepd were accounted for in the UK North Sea.
Mr Manzoni said: “We expect continued underlying production growth through the second half of this year, leading to 5-10% absolute growth next year.”
Talisman said yesterday that production in the quarter averaged 411,000boepd, down from 424,000boepd the year before as a result of non-core asset sales.
Production guidance for the full year was unchanged at just above 400,000boepd.
The group also reported net income of £379million for the period, up from £39.6million a year earlier, on revenue up 5% at £1billion.
Meanwhile, oil and gas industry subsea engineering and construction company Subsea 7 said the market remained competitive in the short term, however, the outlook in the medium-to-long term remained encouraging.
Subsea 7 said recent project awards in the North Sea had been a positive development, with further projects expected to be awarded for execution in 2011 and 2012.
It reported pre-tax profits of £41.35million for the three months to June 30, down from profits of £76.9million a year earlier. Revenue for the period was £335.42million against £411.1million the year before.
Acergy and Subsea 7 announced plans last month to create a group worth more than £3.6billion.
Acergy is buying Subsea 7 in an all-share deal to create a leader in undersea engineering and construction for the oil and gas industry.
The international firms both have big operations at Westhill, near Aberdeen.
Subsea 7 has nearly 1,000 working out of its north-east site, while Acergy has more than 500.
Elsewhere, oilfield service companies Schlumberger and Smith International announced that the European Commission had cleared their proposed merger without any conditions, although it remains to be cleared by the US Department of Justice and approved by Smith stockholders.
Schlumberger and Smith said they expected the merger would close in the third quarter of this year. Until then, they will continue to operate as separate and independent companies.