On 25 June, London-based Premier Oil plc announced the appointment of Tony Durrant as Chief Executive Officer.
Durrant joined Premier in June 2005 and has served as Finance Director of the company for nine years. Prior to joining Premier, he worked at Lehman Brothers as Managing Director and head of the European Natural Resources Group.
Tony Durrant said last month: "Along with the team, I will be driving the business forward by maintaining our good recent momentum and, in due course, will update shareholders on the actions we will be taking to further Premier’s next stage of development."
On 10 July, Premier issued a trading and operations update re: financials to 30 June 2014. Durrant said: “Recent performance across our portfolio has been strong. We have exceeded our production targets, disposed of non-core assets, received Government sanction of the Catcher project and successfully completed our bank refinancing. These are all priorities that we set ourselves for the first half. We have also had exploration success in Indonesia and achieved first oil production from Dua in Vietnam. In the second half, we will focus again on achieving our production targets, on the installation of the Solan facilities and on progressing the Sea Lion project.”
Total revenues for H1 2014 will be about $880 million, up 16% year-over-year from US$758 million in H1 2013.
The company anticipates spending $180 million (pre-tax) on exploration and $1 billion on development (before disposal proceeds) in 2014, unchanged from prior estimates.
Premier started a share buy-back program on 13 March, and since starting, Durrant said the company has acquired 6.1 million shares at a volume-weighted average price of 325.3 pence.
In his first interview as CEO, Durrant told Bloomberg that he has several immediate priorities: to bring the west of Shetland Solan field onstream by the end of the year, find a partner to develop the Sea Lion project off the Falklands, exceed an oil-production target, and double the company's cash flow within five years to about $2 billion/year.
Read more:
First oil from Dua, 40 years after discovery, 11 July 2014
August Solan installation plan, 10 July 2014
Premier wants partner in Sea Lion, 7 February 2014
Premier CEO Lockett to resign, 4 February 2014
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