Faroe: well incentivised

But if the ‘find and sell’ model has worked well so far, it hasn’t kept everyone happy. “The market expects exploration results for next to nothing,” says chief executive Graham Stewart. “Hard assets are what seem to count.”

Now, with liquidity further boosted by a $100m (£71m) bond, Faroe can do both. The Brasse development – “a source of great excitement”, says Mr Stewart – will suck up a lot of cash, and means that development and production expenditure should hit £175m in 2018. And although this year’s exploration and appraisal programme could see up to six wells drilled at a cost of £80m, Norway’s fiscal regime still provides a massive incentive: post-tax, the expected outlay should drop to £20m.

This subsidy does not yet appear endangered, despite the apparent national pivot away from oil, most recently demonstrated by Statoil’s name change to ‘Equinor’. Still, Faroe’s looming production growth will steadily reduce any dependence on the incentives, were a new government to review the fiscal terms. On average, analysts expect pre-tax profit of £3.6m and adjusted EPS of 8.3p in 2018, versus estimates for a loss of £14.2m and 1.1p last year.