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An independent report has confirmed Hurricane Energy's own estimates its Lancaster field west of Shetland houses more than 2.3 billion barrels of oil with recoverable resource in excess of 500 million barrels.

The new figures, in an updated Competent Person's Report (CPR), an independent technical report to assess oil and gas assets published by RPS Energy Consultants, estimates the Lancaster find has 523 million barrels of recoverable oil, up 162 per cent on 2013 estimates.

Hurricane said P2 reserves – those with a 50 per cent chance of recovery – are estimated at 37.3 million barrels for the initial six-year planned Early Production System at Lancaster, due to come online in 2019, which the CPR values at $525 million (404.5 million) over the six years at a 10 per cent discount rate.

In April Hurricane doubled its own estimates on the Lancaster find west of Shetland to 593 million barrels of potentially recoverable resource.

The company said the estimates in the CPR report relate only to the Lancaster field within the Greater Lancaster Area.

Hurricane recently announced a huge discovery at the Halifax Field west of Shetland which it believes is linked to the Lancaster field 30 miles away and the Lincoln and Warwick discoveries could also be a single field, separated from Lancaster by the Brynhild fault.

The company noted in April it was now proceeding to first phase of development at Lancaster with an Early Production System (EPS), with first oil targeted for the first half of 2019 with an estimated base case of 17,000 barrels of oil per day.

The EPS is the first phase of the wider full field development of Lancaster.

The company said the EPS aims to recover “a very small fraction of overall recoverable Lancaster volumes”, with 16 million barrels being the break-even volume, though the base case volume is estimated at 62 mmbbl.

Commenting on the Competent Person's Report findings, Dr Robert Trice, chief executive of Hurricane, said: “We are delighted to now have independent verification of the highly material uplift in the resources we have at Lancaster.

“It is also a landmark for Hurricane to have reserves assigned at the field relating to our planned EPS, for which we continue to advance plans, maintaining our target for first oil of H1 2019.

“We expect to publish CPRs relating to Halifax and Lincoln later in 2017, which we are confident will be a material addition to our already significant resource base.”