Jadestone Energy has reported progress on the Montara Shutdown Work on Tuesday. The decision to shut the Montara asset was made in November. As a result of work progressing on target, the company expected production to resume later this month.

Jadestone Energy closed the Montara asset in November in order to correct an extensive backlog of inspection and maintenance routines.

All activities associated with the oil system is now fully complete and the facility is now ready to resume production.

Additionally, the company has said that the Montara facility will now be able to operate reliably without any planned major maintenance shutdown until 2020 at the very least.

President and CEO of Jadestone Energy, Paul Blakeley, commented on the announcement:

“Whilst we were aware, through the due diligence process, of the opportunity to improve operating performance at the Montara asset, and had factored this into our analysis, integrity flaws in the incumbent operator’s MMS made it impossible to identify the full extent of the inspection backlog, and couldn’t provide clear information on inspection status, or the ability to plan future maintenance tasks.”

“In the course of working with the operator during the transition phase, since closing the acquisition at the end of September, this became more fully apparent, and led to the identification of a number of incidents of non-compliance with the approved safety case. Having opted to shut down the facility and remedy the broad maintenance and inspection backlog, we have also corrected the MMS itself. While this work scope has resulted in a protracted shutdown timeline, it was a prudent operational decision and one that will significantly reduce ongoing work effort, uncertainty and inefficiency. The asset is now up to date with regards to inspection and major maintenance.”

“The extensive scope of inspection work we have undertaken has confirmed our view that the Montara facility is in excellent condition. After having completed over 800 assurance tasks, we see nothing that changes our view of the exceptional value we have attributed to the Montara asset.”

“This shutdown will more rapidly embed Jadestone’s proven operating philosophy and safety culture, and when Jadestone assumes operatorship, we will now inherit a high reliability facility that we can operate safely and with confidence. Whilst unplanned outages can always occur, the work undertaken in this shutdown is expected to materially improve uptime performance in the years ahead.”

Elsewhere in oil and energy news, the UK’s energy price cap is expected to begin next month, as announced in November. Indeed, the price cap on default energy tariffs are set to begin soon as households have been overpaying for energy. Equally, oil prices fell in November on the back of OPEC’s output cut uncertainty.

At 16:00 GMT -5 yesterday, shares in Jadestone Energy Inc (CVE:JSE) were trading at +1.72%.