There's been a flurry of updates in the UK oil and gas space. Shares in Tullow Oil (TLW) have been on the slide of late, and the company has been finding it hard to secure a buyer for some of its mature assets in the southern North Sea, but all is not lost. Tullow now expects production at between 84,000 and 88,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day (boepd) for 2013, representing a 6-11 per cent annual increase.
Heritage Oil (HOIL) certainly isn't averse to operating in fractious environments, so it came as no surprise that it has entered into a joint venture with the Bayelsa Oil Company to form an indigenous Nigerian oil company called Petrobay Energy Ltd. Petrobay will look to acquire oil and gas assets in both onshore and shallow water locations in Nigeria. Given the deterioration in the country's security situation, there should be no shortage of sellers.
There was good news from one of our long-standing buy tips, Ophir Energy (OPHR). Drilling at the company's Mzia-3 appraisal well encountered 56 metres of net pay, with reservoir quality in line with that of the Mzia-1 and Mzia-2 wells. The result at Mzia-3 has enabled Ophir to bump up the overall mean contingent recoverable resource for the Mzia discovery by 0.7 trillion cubic feet (tcf) to 5.2 tcf.
Lastly, still smarting from its rejection by Kentz Corp (KENZ), energy service provider Amec (AMEC) can at least take consolation from the fact that it has secured another contract from France's GDF Suez to provide hook-up and commissioning support services on the £1.4bn Cygnus gas development project in the southern North Sea.
