Rockhopper eyeing milestones at Sea Lion project this year

4th Apr 2014 08:12

Rockhopper Exploration, the North Falkland Basin oil and gas group, said that it expects its core Sea Lion project to face a number of key development milestones in 2014.Phase one of the Sea Lion Development is expected to recover 293m barrels of oil, with anticipated gross peak production rates at above 100,000 barrels a day.In a pre-close update for the financial year ended March 31st, the company said that pre-development activity on Sea Lion is continuing as scheduled with the award of so-called FEED (Front End Engineering and Design) contracts expected during May.Plans for a four-well exploration drilling campaign in 2015 are continuing and negotiations with rig providers are said to be at an advanced stage."We continue to actively support Premier Oil as they seek to bring in another partner for the project," said Chairman Pierre Jungels. "As we get closer to signing a rig contract we will be able to firm up our exploration drilling programme, which we expect would expose our shareholders to almost 800m barrels (net Pmean stock tank oil initially in place)."The stock was up 2.2% at 95p by 08:40.BC