Oil and gas producer Karoon Energy (ASX:KAR) has stopped production from the Baúna oil field, off the coast of Brazil. This follows the breakage of two anchor chains on the floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel Cidade de Itajaí.
On December 11, 2024, the company and FPSO operator Altera&Ocyan implemented a controlled shutdown as a precautionary measure to protect onboard personnel and the environment.
The FPSO remains stable and in service, Karoon expects production to restart during the week of December 23, 2024, once repairs are completed on at least one of the lines and regulatory approvals are obtained.
The “shut-in” (the closing of valves to stop oil extraction) affected Karoon’s production forecast for Baúna for calendar year 2024, which was revised downward from 7.5 to 7, 7 million barrels of oil (million barrels of oil) to 7.2 to 7.4 million barrels.
Another shortfall
In other bad news, Karoon also reported a production deficit on its Who Dat project in the Gulf of Mexico. The full-year forecast for Who Dat was lowered from 3.0 to 3.1 Mboe (million barrels of oil equivalent) to 2.9 Mboe.
This was attributed to an extended maintenance shutdown caused by Hurricane Rafael, which increased the downtime from a planned 10 to 14 days to 18 days.
The combined 2024 production forecast for the Karoon operations has been revised downward from 10.5-10.8 million boe to 10.1-10.3 million boe.
Karoon shares closed down 9.68% at $1.26. Since the start of the year, they are down 39.13%.
