The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Downtime at Beryl and Forties hits Apache as it halts UK investments
Apache missed analyst estimates in the final quarter of the year after a slide in North Sea production caused by forced cuts in production at key fields.
Apache reported net income of $2.9 billion for full-year 2023, but missed quarterly earnings and production estimates following work to fix issues at Beryl Alpha and Forties platforms.
The firm said production for the quarter had come in below guidance due to “additional compressorrelated downtime”.
Q4 2023 production held at 414,000 barrels per day while total adjusted production for the year is expected to be “relatively flat”.
APA plans to invest $1.92bn upstream, but none in the UK.
UK assets will remain in a state of managed decline, and the group has “no drilling planned”.
That’s likely to result in a year-over-year production decline of around 20%.
A large maintenance turnaround will affect production in Q2 and Q3, with production guidance at 35,000-37,000 boe a day for the year – below the 41,000-43,000 in Q1.
In November the firm announced plans to trim up to 15% of its 600-strong workforce, launching consultations that would see a “maximum” of 90 redundancies at its Aberdeen office.
It plans to bring forward the Forties oilfield shutdown by 11 years in a £200 million slash to UK costs.
In a recent update, Apache said it has “technically attractive drilling prospects that are not currently economic” under the Energy Profits Levy framework.
It says it now has a “right-sized organisation to align with lower planned activity levels”.
Meanwhile, its modest global investment plans reflect a strategy to moderate activity levels during periods of lower commodity prices.
Of its upstream budget $100m will be routed toward exploration activities, predominantly in Alaska, and $50m toward progressing a large-scale FPSO project in Suriname.
In Egypt the company’s drilling programme “continues to perform well”, with a success rate of 26 of 31 wells in the fourth quarter of 2023.
In Egypt the drilling programme continues to perform well