OIL and gas entrepreneur Tom Cross’s Parkmead Group yesterday underlined its hopes for a key project in the Central North Sea and signalled an appetite for further acquisitions, as it reported a 70% jump in revenues.

Executive chairman Mr Cross said Parkmead had “continued to make progress towards building a balanced, independent business of breadth and scale”.

Parkmead announced in February that it had increased its equity in the Perth and Dolphin oil fields in the Moray Firth area of the Central North Sea from 60.5 per cent to 100%. These fields lie at the core of Parkmead’s Greater Perth Area (GPA) oil hub project.

Mr Cross highlighted Parkmead’s agreement with Nexen Petroleum, a subsidiary of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, to conduct a detailed engineering study in relation to the potential subsea tie-back of the GPA project to the Nexen-operated Scott platform and associated facilities.

Noting Parkmead had entered into commercial discussions with the Scott field partners to explore terms for a tie-back of GPA to Scott, he added: “The Scott facilities lie just some 10km south-east of the GPA project…Utilisation of this export route has the potential to transform the GPA project commercially and economically, by dramatically reducing the capital expenditure required to bring the GPA project onstream and by lowering the operating costs thereafter.”

Parkmead’s revenues from continuing operations jumped by 70% to £7.02m in the year to June, with Mr Cross citing enhanced gas production in the Netherlands.

He said: “The team at Parkmead is working intensively to evaluate and execute further value-adding opportunities.”