EnQuest PLC will reschedule the Kraken drilling program and has restarted the Ninian Central Platform, both in the North Sea, after an unplanned outage.
The company provided the North Sea operations update in a press release Nov. 20.
After the Kraken joint venture partners were unable to agree on a 2025 drilling program, EnQuest terminated the rig contract with Dolphin Drilling at a net cost of $14.6 million. EnQuest plans to reschedule infill wells at the heavy-oil producing asset as part of a wider drilling program in 2026.
In early November, an unplanned outage at the third-party operated Ninian platform shut in all system users, including Magnus oil field production. EnQuest led a short dive support vessel campaign to inspect and repair the subsea hydraulic system, and production has now returned to pre-outage levels.
Due to the impact of the Ninian outage, EnQuest now expects its full-year production to be slightly below its 41,000–45,000 boe/d guidance range.
EnQuest has accelerated an investment in flare gas recovery at Magnus to further enhance asset performance, reduce emissions, and optimize free cash flow in 2025, it said. As a result, 2024 capital expenditure is expected to total about $250 million, with a net reduction in 2024 free cashflow of about $15 million. Group 2024 operating and decommissioning expenditure guidance is maintained at about $415 million and $70 million, respectively.
Alex Procyk | Upstream Editor
Alex Procyk is Upstream Editor at Oil & Gas Journal. He has also served as a principal technical professional at Halliburton and as a completion engineer at ConocoPhillips. He holds a BS in chemistry (1987) from Kent State University and a PhD in chemistry (1992) from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).
