Faroe Petroleum Starts Drilling West Of Shetland Tornado Exploration Well

Published: 29-Sep-2009

Faroe Petroleum plc (Faroe Petroleum) announced that drilling has commenced on the Tornado prospect. It is an oil prospect, located 130 kilometers west of the Shetlands Islands in 1,100 meters (m) of water adjacent to the undeveloped BP Plc-operated Suilven field, and within tie-back distance of the producing Schiehallion oil field. Faroe Petroleum has 7.5% working interest in the Tornado prospect.

Faroe Petroleum was awarded the Tornado interest under the UKCS 22nd licensing round and in May 2007 farmed down on promoted terms half of its 20% interest to Idemitsu E&P UK Limited. This was in line with Faroe Petroleum's strategy of farming-out the majority of drilling costs to reduce its cost exposure whilst retaining material remaining interests.

Following the farmout, Faroe Petroleum holds a 10% interest in block P.1190 (block 204/13) which represents a 7.5% working interest in the Tornado prospect under the terms of a joint activity agreement with the adjacent license holders (P.1262, block 204/14b).

The drilling operation is to be undertaken by the operator OMV (UK) Ltd using the Stena Carron drillship.

Graham Stewart, chief executive of Faroe Petroleum commented “We are very pleased to announce the start of the drilling operations on the Tornado prospect. Tornado is the second well to be drilled in the firm five-well Atlantic Margin exploration drilling programme which Faroe Petroleum is undertaking, and follows on from our very recent Glenlivet discovery which is currently being appraised with a side-track well.”

“Following Tornado, we are scheduled to drill three further high impact exploration wells in the Atlantic margin, namely the Anne Marie oil prospect in the Faroes (operated by Eni), the Cardhu oil prospect in the UK (operated by BP) and the Lagavulin oil prospect in the UK (operated by Chevron)”.

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