A final decision on investment for the Sea Lion oil field off the Falkland Islands will not now be made until the end of next year, it has emerged.
Falklands-focused explorers Rockhopper, which agreed a farm-out into the £3.3billion site with Premier Oil last October, had been looking to start a three-well exploration programme next year.
But now the company has admitted it will be the end of 2014 before a final decision on investment in the field is made.
“We have around 150 million barrels of fully funded oil, which in the present financial market conditions is a good place to be,” said chairman Pierre Jungels.
“In addition to our funded oil, we also have the cash to fund further exploration in the North Falklands Basin. Having completed the handover of our Falklands data and engineering work to the new operator we are pleased to say that there is now a baseline concept that meets all of the operator’s internal economic metrics.
“Work continues apace to optimise the concept before front-end engineering and design can start, which we anticipate will be in early 2014. The final investment decision is now expected to be around the end of 2014.”
The Sea Lion discovery could contain more than 400million barrels of oil if no gas cap exists on the site.
The company said it was also in negotiations with the Falkland Islands government over tax liabilities relating to the £621million farm-out deal with Premier. It had submitted tax returns for a liability of around £51million, but the island’s tax office had challenged that and valued the tax at £195million.