Premier Oil Says Third Partner May Be Invited for Froye Field

Premier Oil Plc (PMO) said an additional partner may be brought in to speed up development of Norway’s offshore Froye field that’s expected to pump its first oil as early as 2014.

An investment decision will be made this year, said Simon Lockett, chief executive officer of Premier Oil, which shares the development equally with Det Norske Oljeselskap ASA (DETNOR), a Norwegian explorer. The field holds about 60 million barrels of recoverable oil, according to Det Norske’s website.

Det Norske has “got too many things to do for them in one go and therefore needs to reduce their equities in one or two of their projects,” Lockett said today in an interview in London.

Premier expects to reduce its stake in the field to about 40 percent in favor of a new partner, Lockett said. Froye may pump as much as 35,000 barrels of oil a day with development costs of around 3 billion kroner ($560 million), Det Norske’s CEO Erik Haugane said in November.

The partners have yet to agree on the Froye development and Det Norske may reduce its stake, Haugane said when contacted today. “We will be pragmatic about” transferring the operatorship of the project should that be required, he said.

The partners may use Sevan Marine ASA (SEVAN)’s floating, production, storage offloading vessel for the project should the Norwegian company resolve its current financial difficulties, Lockett said.

“They’ve got a couple of more hauls half-built in China and it could be accelerated,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eduard Gismatullin in London at egismatullin@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Will Kennedy at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net