Management Resource Solutions Share News (MRS)

Oil and gas firm Melrose Resources has raised its estimate of average daily production for the year after a productive third quarter.Production in the third quarter was around 25% higher than in the third quarter of 2008, reflecting high output from the company’s existing Egyptian fields and also contributions from new field developments.Production totalled 18.2bn cubic feet of gas and 949m barrels of oil and condensate on a working interesting basis, equivalent to a daily average rate of 43.4m barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd).On a net entitlement basis, third quarter production was 7.8bn cubic feet of gas and 420m barrels of oil and condensate, giving an average daily rate of 18.7m boepd. The company now expects daily average production for the whole of 2009 to be 38.5m boepd, up from its August forecast of 37.5m boepd.On a net entitlement basis, the forecast has been hiked to 16.8m boepd, assuming that the Brent oil price during 2009 will average less than $60 per barrel.The 2009 capital expenditure forecast remains unchanged.‘Significant progress has been made across all our development projects during the quarter and we now look forward to augmenting this activity with an exciting exploration programme over the forthcoming months,’ said David Thomas, Melrose’s chief executive.‘This will include a number of seismic surveys, the drilling of three high graded prospects in the Nile Delta followed by our first well in the Mesaha frontier exploration concession in Upper Egypt in late 2010,’ Thomas added.