The UK's Serica Energy has suspended production from its Triton floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) platform in the North Sea due to Storm Eowyn and expects production to resume in mid-to-late March, it said on Tuesday.
Serica's shares plunged nearly 14 per cent by 10:13 GMT and the company said that its 40,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) production outlook for this year was under review.
The company shut production at the FPSO platform on January 24 because of Storm Eowyn. After a restart on January 28, Serica found damage to parts of the platform and has kept production offline for repairs.
"Given that the Triton FPSO was recovering strongly from the operational issues of 2024, with material production from new wells, the impact of Storm Eowyn is deeply frustrating," CEO Chris Cox said in a statement.
The outages at Triton last year had hampered Serica's annual output.
"While this shutdown is disappointing, it is not wholly surprising given the age of the FPSO and the plan to significantly extend its operational life well beyond that which it was designed for," said Panmure Liberum analyst Ashley Kelty.
The company added that a third-party engineering study assessing the extension of Triton's life concluded that the FPSO has potential to continue to produce well into the next decade.
Serica said its production averaged 37,000 boepd in January, which has dropped to 27,000 boepd so far this month. Serica, however, did not say if the drop was solely attributable to the stoppage at Triton.
Jefferies said the suspension raises a question over the operational integrity of the Triton FPSO, but solid production from company's other assets should provide some security to the dividend.
(Reporting by Arunima Kumar in Bengaluru Editing by Savio D'Souza and David Goodman )