AEY.L Share News (AEY)

* Production halted at Causeway, Cormorant East fields * Analyst says impact on Antrim could be minor * Antrim shares fall as much as 4 percent By Krithika Krishnamurthy Jan 16 (Reuters) - Antrim Energy Inc saidtwo of its oil fields in the North Sea went off productionfollowing a leak in an oil pumping station that is part ofBritain's North Sea Brent pipeline system, sending its sharesdown 4 percent. The leak at one of the legs of the Cormorant Alpha platform,operated by Abu Dhabi oil company Taqa, has disruptedproduction at more than 20 oil fields in the northern North Sea,Antrim said. Antrim said production was stopped at the Causeway field andthe cormorant East field and that all pipeline infrastructureassociated with the Cormorant Alpha platform were shut in. Calgary-based Antrim has a 35.5 percent stake in theCauseway field, which produced an average of 4,800 barrels ofoil per day (bpd) in November. Britain's Valiant Petroleum Plc owns the rest of the field and operates it. Antrim owns 8.4 percent of the cormorant East field, whichstarted production on Monday with an initial rate of about 5,500bpd. Taqa owns 60 percent of the field and operates it, whileFirst Oil Expro and Granby Enterprises Ltd are the otherstakeholders. "The impact on Antrim could really be quite minor and whatI'm reading appears to be minor, but we don't know..." saidanalyst Bill Newman of Mackie Research Capital. "We're going tomonitor Taqa's update for now." Taqa said it shut down all pipeline infrastructure runningthrough the Cormorant Alpha platform, and that it had no restartdate, sending crude oil prices surging to $111 a barrel onWednesday. At $110 per barrel, the lost production is worth about $10million per day, said Mike Tholen, economics director at Oil &Gas UK, a trade association for the offshore oil and gasindustry. () He estimated that oil produced from the affected fieldsaccounts for about 10 percent of UK's production of 1 millionbarrels per day. Shell UK said the shutdown has not had any directimpact on its Brent Field installations. Shares of Antrim, valued at about C$103 million, were at a two-week low of 54 Canadian cents on Wednesday morning. Theyhave lost nearly a third of their value over the past threemonths.