Enquest tumbles after production guidance cut

Enquest shares tumbled after the oil and gas company cut its production guidance for the second time in less than three months.

The company said full-year production would be about 45,000 barrels of oil per day including the Golden Eagle North Sea field that it bought in October.

In early September Enquest said production would be at the low end of its guidance for 46-52,000 barrels per day. That forecast did not include Golden Eagle.

Enquest said its second guidance warning was caused by compressor system outages at its Magnus facility and a short unplanned shutdown at its Kraken site. A pipeline replacement at another site was delayed because of a lack of support vessels.

Shares of Enquest fell 15% to 18.98p at 09:12 GMT.

In the 10 months to the end of October average daily production at Magnus fell to 12,640 barrels per day from 17,570 a year earlier and at Kraken it dropped to 22,544 barrels from 26,637. Enquest said revenue and cash flow benefited from strong oil prices.

Chief Executive Amjad Bseisu said: "Group production has been challenging, largely driven by performance at Magnus and a recent unplanned shutdown at Kraken, combined with a supplier driven delay in the pipeline replacement in Malaysia."