Valiant Petroleum plc announces that production commenced on Tuesday, 28 April 2009 from the West Don field located in Blocks 211/18a West Don Area and 211/13b (License P236 and P1200 respectively) in the UK North Sea and is producing in-line with expectations. The Company’s subsidiary, Valiant North Sea Limited ( “Valiant”), has a 17.275% unitized interest in the field which is operated by Petrofac Energy Developments Limited on behalf of Valiant and the other development partners, Nippon Oil Exploration and Production (U.K.) Limited, Stratic Energy (UK) Limited and First Oil Expro Limited.
A further West Don production well and water injection well are expected to start-up during the third quarter of this year. Oil export from the production facilities will be initially by offshore tanker loading and subsequently via subsea tie-back to the Thistle platform.
Production has been achieved from West Don in less than one year from receiving governmental approval of the Field Development Plan ('FDP').
Don Southwest (Valiant, 40%), which is being jointly developed alongside West Don, is currently anticipated to begin production by the end of June from two production wells.
Peter Buchanan, Valiant’s CEO, commented:
“First oil from West Don marks a very important milestone for Valiant in becoming a full-cycle exploration and production company. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the operator, our joint development partners and all of those people whose time and energy have made this development possible and look forward to continuing to work with them to project completion.”
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