In an interview with London South East's Donald Leggatt, Angus Energy Managing Director George Lucan gave an in-depth operational update on the reconnection works taking place currently at Saltfleetby in Lincolnshire, once Britain's largest on shore gas field. George also talked us through the next steps of the planning application at Balcombe in West Sussex.

Work has already began on-site at Salfleetby, and planning consent for a pipeline to take gas from the process plant to a new National Grid entry point has been granted. All that is required now is consent for the gas processing plant. The hope is that gas is flowing around New Year - although that depends on how long the commissioning period takes. National Grid have been signed up to do their side of the reconnection works, and George is delighted.

"This means that no less than National Grid, the top of the pyramid, have been contracted to build their end of the pipeline" said George, "They have been reviewing and approving our own work and are seeing a sensible plan and programmme ahead. Its actual things happening now. " In terms of planning, George hopes "God willing" to get planning consent in early September and to get straight down to building the compression plant. On and off site, the pipeline should take about a month to build, with exhaustive testing thereafter.

And in terms of total CAPEX for all the works, "We are aiming for about £2.5M" said George. "The processing kit will done by lease financing, that's always been the plan, so not a CAPEX cost as such, it will be done through the JOA (Joint Operating Agreement) and has been agreed by our partners."

The National Grid are the only people who do work on National Grid equipment explained George, hence the contract is with them. As for the processing plant, we will see bits of kit arrive from October and through November. We expect 10 large items, 100's of smaller ones and construction to take place during October, November and December. We are on the point of awarding that contact shortly, as we have already done with the pipeline. The Weald assets are to a point 'legacy elements'. "We had bad luck with Brockham, we hit a duster despite our best efforts.

Balcombe and the licence still have value, we will use water to stimulate production, we think the economics of that field will deliver further value to shareholders. Lidsey similarly will wash its face and remains a genuinely exciting prospect" explained George. "We had to pull our Balcombe planning ap, and we are going to resubmit within the next month or so."