The Oil Man: Kosmos, Enquest, Cairn, Premier

WTI $47.64 +27c, Brent $51.87 +21c, Diff -$4.23 -6c, NG $2.94 -2c

A flash blog today as I am venturing north of the border and will update from there if appropriate. A quick run through of various bits of news from Tuesday and Wednesday, though.

Kosmos has announced that the drill stem test on Tortue-1 has been a success at 60 million cubic feet per day and the development will go ahead successfully with fewer producers at 200 million cubic feet per day. This is good news from Kosmos and its partners and West Africa in general.

EnQuest was going great guns but today has a sort of profit warning as it substantially downgrades production guidance from 45-51,000 barrels per day to 37,000 barrels per day. This is due to delays at Kraken -they might have gone with the news yesterday and the Cairn could have mentioned it.

Cairn couldn't, obviously, and stuck to "commissioning issues" without talking delayed numbers. Whilst on numbers, they upgraded Senegal to 563 million barrels plus 1 trillion cubic feet of gas, which is a pitifully low figure given what FAR have already talked on the record.

While they said that they would only sell to "a substantial bid", they talk a weak story. Given that a sale from strength would be improved if they were the operator, they shouldn't be talking about ceding it to Woodside, who, it should be reminded, are in arbitration over the validity of their deal with Circle Oil.

Premier have announced the sale of Wytch Farm for $200 million (£156 million) after having recently topped up at the expense of RockRose. This is a good move and will help marginally on the debt mountain.

Figures tomorrow from Prems, which might see the announcement of the Tolmount deal with an infrastructure fund. Surely after that Sea Lion approval beckons.

Cape had interims yesterday, which blew away the forecasts and had wags suggesting that they might have sold out on the cheap.

I would normally be in that camp were it not for my admiration of Joe Oatley, who clearly sees trouble ahead and should be listened to. Check your service company forecast guys. More on the above and more laters.

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