Banks reduce lending limit for North Sea player amid crude price plunge
NORTH Sea-focused Ithaca Energy’s has seen the limit on its borrowing facilities reduced in a move Cenkos Securities said may reflect the cautious view banks are taking about future oil prices. Aberdeen-based Ithaca said its available bank debt capacity is $515 million (£335m) prior to the expected start up of the Stella field the second quarter of 2016. The limit was $650m previously. Analysts at Cenkos wrote: “The drop in availability was expected, given the cautious price decks being used by the banks.” However, Ithaca noted it has in excess of $125 million of funding headroom ahead of planned first oil from Stella. Led by chief executive Les Thomas, the company recently secured $66m investment from Delek Group of Israel.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here