Crashing oil prices delay work on BP’s £500m plant

ENERGY giant BP has postponed the construction of a £500million gas plant due to plummeting oil prices.

Building work on the Shetland gas ‘sweetening plant’ has been delayed by six months.

A sudden fall in the global price of oil – crashing from more than $100 (£66) a barrel to less than $50 (£33), though it has subsequently risen to just above $60 (£40) – has forced the firm to re-examine its entire portfolio of capital projects.

The sweetening plant will remove hydrogen sulphide from ‘sour’ gas piped in by Total from the west of Shetland to BP’s new plant next door.

Other projects, such as the £4.5billion Clair Phase 2 project to unlock 640million barrels of oil from the giant Clair field west of Shetland, remain on schedule.

BP said: ‘We are not cancelling projects but we are deferring and pushing back in some instances.

‘Sullom Voe gas sweetening is not as mature as some of our other projects, so it is one we are looking to re-phase. This resets the project to better weather windows.’