Pursues UK strategy

DNO Heather Limited announced in November 1999 that it had acquired the 100 percent beneficial interest in the Greater Heather Area Blocks 2/4 and 2/5 in the Northern North Sea with the intention of increasing production from the Heather Field and bringing on stream production from nearby satellite oil accumulations. The company, which has been Operator of the Blocks since July 1997, is now pleased to intimate that the infill drilling programme on the Heather Field has now commenced using reactivated and upgraded drilling facilities which have not been in use since 1991.

Commenting upon the resurgence in activity, Dr Stewart Watson (Chief Executive) stated “Advances in Reservoir Description, Drilling and Sub-sea Technologies have convinced us that having extracted some 120 millions barrels of oil from the Heather Field to date, there is still the potential to extract a further 80 million barrels from the Heather Field and adjacent oil accumulations using a combination of the existing Heather infrastructure and sub-sea tie-backs. Our objective is to triple oil production over the Heather Platform in the next few years. This will be achieved by judicious infill drilling of the Heather reservoir and the sub-sea development of proven oil in the North Terrace and West Heather satellites. With this in mind, a programme of Heather infill drilling has commenced and a sub-sea project development team has been formed with the intention of bringing on-stream oil from the North Terrace in 2001.