EnQuest has stripped another $100million (£82million) off the cost of Kraken, one of the UK North Sea’s biggest oil prospects.
The company said better performance on drilling and subsea production systems meant full-cycle capital expenditure for the project was now about £2billion.
The firm’s guidance on its net spend on Kraken in 2016 has come down by a further £40 million to between £510million and £550million.
The floating production, storage and offloading vessel for Kraken is close to completion and is set for sailaway later this year.
EnQuest holds the operatorship and 70.5% of Kraken, while Edinburgh-based explorer Cairn Energy has 29.5%.
EnQuest and Cairn hope to squeeze as many as 147million barrels of oil out of Kraken, which lies 218 miles north-east of Aberdeen.
Peak production of 50,000 barrels a day is expected in 2018-19.
