Total Starts North Sea Gas Project Despite Supply Glut
09 February 2016 - 2:59AM
Dow Jones News
By Selina Williams and Inti Landauro
LONDON--One of the last big North Sea projects sanctioned under
high-oil prices has begun pumping natural gas, highlighting an
unexpected boom in U.K. energy production that analysts say is
unsustainable.
French oil company Total SA said Monday that a deep water
natural-gas project west of the Shetland Islands called Laggan
Tormore will produce the equivalent of 90,000 barrels of oil a
day--almost 6% of the U.K.'s total output.
Laggan Tormore is part of $50 billion of U.K. offshore projects
that were commissioned in recent years when oil prices were $80 a
barrel or more. Now those developments are coming onstream, helping
companies working off the U.K.'s coast to pump an estimated 8% more
oil and gas in 2015, around 1.6 million barrels of oil equivalent a
day.
A project led by Total committed to invest $5 billion in Laggan
Tormore in 2010, when oil prices were $80 a barrel and rising. Few
projects of its size, scope and technical difficulty would be
launched now, with oil prices hovering around $30 a barrel,
analysts said.
Oil prices are trading some 70% below their peak in 2014, amid a
global glut of crude that far outpaces daily demand. The price
collapse has fueled concerns that the decline of North Sea oil will
accelerate.
At current oil prices more than a third of fields are running at
a loss, said Mike Tholen, economics director at Oil & Gas U.K.,
an advocacy group for oil companies.
"The question is what's next after the current wave of
investment has worked its way through," Mr. Tholen said.
Even before oil prices crashed from a peak of $115 a barrel in
2014, the North Sea was struggling. Escalating costs, dwindling
opportunities, technically challenging fields and a complex tax
structure had already posed major challenges for the companies.
Companies have cut back on exploration drilling, which means
there will be fewer opportunities to tap in the future. Last year,
companies were forecast to have drilled only 14 exploration wells,
down from around 40 in 2014, according to Oil & Gas U.K.
The total volume of oil and gas produced on the U.K. Continental
Shelf, typically known as the North Sea, was up 8.6% in the first
10 months of 2015 , compared with a year earlier, according to the
U.K.'s Department for Energy and Climate Change.
Output in November and December historically tends to be more
stable, which would result in a full-year increase of 8%, Oil &
Gas U.K. said. Oil and gas output was 1.49 million barrels of oil
equivalent a day in 2014.
U.K. utility SSE PLC and Denmark's Dong Energy also have stakes
in Laggan Tormore.
Write to Selina Williams at selina.williams@wsj.com and Inti
Landauro at inti.landauro@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 08, 2016 10:44 ET (15:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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