Cairn Energy: Offshore Ireland not a priority

Scottish exploration company Cairn Energy has said it does not view its offshore Irish interests as priority assets, but remains committed to exploring here.

The Edinburgh-headquartered company yesterday reported a loss of $38m (€34m) for the first half of this year; significantly down on the $230m loss for the same time last year.

Uppermost in Cairn’s mind now is the SNE oil well — a world-class discovery it made at the end of 2014 — off the coast of Senegal, which contains an estimated 473m barrels of recoverable oil. Gross oil in place estimates for the prospect are as high as 2.7bn barrels.