Aberdeen’s Ithaca Energy said today that “quick payback” projects had boosted production at the company, which recently bought most of Chevron’s North Sea portfolio.
Ithaca, owned by Israel’s Delek Group, initially announced the acquisition in May, and went on to complete the £1.6 billion swoop earlier this month.
Bosses at Ithaca said today that the focus over the coming months would turn to the “transformation programme”, centred on “simplification, efficiency and value creation”.
Post-completion of the Chevron deal, they said work was under way to finalise budgets and work programmes for next year’s activities.
Those are expected to involve infill drilling activities on the Alba field.
Ithaca made the comments in a trading update, which showed a narrowing of pre-tax losses for the first nine months of the year to £13 million from a deficit of £33.6m for the same period last year.
Revenue jumped 7% year-on-year to £210m.
Full-year production is expected to average 75,000 barrels of oil equivalent (boe) per day.
But average output over the fourth quarter should be higher, at 80,000 boe per day, thanks to a host of “quick payback infill drilling and subsea tieback development activities” completed over the year.
A drilling campaign comprising five infill wells and two well workovers was completed on the Captain field in November.
The campaign was the first of two that make up “phase one” of the enhanced oil recovery programme on Captain. The drilling crew is now being mobilised to Alba.
A second campaign on Captain will start in early 2021.
First oil from the BP-operated Vorlich field, which is being tied back to Ithaca’s Greater Stella Area, is on course for the second half of 2020.
The two production wells have been completed and are waiting for the installation of new processing facilities on the FPF-1 vessels and a new flowline.
An infill well on Stella, in the central North Sea, came on stream in August, while a water injection well was completed to boost production from the Cook field.
Seven licence applications have been submitted as part of the 32nd UK Offshore Licensing Round.
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