The Norwegian national oil company had been expected to sanction the development of Bressay any time now using a concept similar to its nearby and more advanced $7 billion Mariner project. That project is unaffected.

“Statoil has decided to re-evaluate the development concept for the Bressay field and to delay the field development decision,” a Statoil spokesman told Upstream.

The move comes after Statoil purchased and evaluated the results of last year's extended well-test carried out by Xcite Energy on the Bentley field, a close analogue to Bressay located six kilometres to the south.

“Interpretation