Lancaster Oilfield at 20 Million Barrels: How Sanjeev and Arani Kumar Soosaipillai Helped Tap the Field’s Potential
In February 2025, the Prax Group’s Upstream team marked a milestone: the 20 millionth barrel of oil extracted from the Lancaster field, located roughly 100 kilometres west of the Shetland Islands. The milestone marked an improbable convergence: a field once dismissed as uncommercial, now producing under the ownership of two entrepreneurs, Sanjeev and Arani Kumar Soosaipillai, who had built their company from a single leased petrol station in Hertfordshire.
Oil Trapped in Billion-Year-Old Rock
The Lancaster oilfield sits in Scottish territorial waters at depths of around 155 metres. Its geology is unusual. The reservoir lies within fractured Precambrian basement rock, granitic formations dating back more than a billion years. Oil migrated into these natural fractures over geological time, eventually accumulating in what would become the UK Continental Shelf’s first producing fractured basement field.
An Abandoned Discovery Revisited
Shell first drilled the structure in 1974 with well 205/21-1A, targeting a Mesozoic sandstone layer identified from 2D seismic surveys. The well encountered oil in fractured basement rock, but the operator concluded that the reservoir lacked commercial viability. Shell plugged and abandoned the well. For 35 years, the discovery sat dormant, its potential unrecognised.
That changed in 2009 when Hurricane Energy, a company founded to pursue fractured basement reservoirs, drilled well 205/21a-4 deeper into the same structure. The result was a column of light crude oil with an API gravity of 38°.
Subsequent appraisal drilling through 2016 confirmed high flow rates, and in 2016, Hurricane committed to an Early Production System using the Aoka Mizu floating production, storage, and offloading (“FPSO”) vessel. First oil came in June 2019, making Lancaster the UK’s inaugural producing fractured basement field.
Early Promise Gives Way to Revised Expectations
Initial expectations were high. Hurricane had estimated recoverable resources exceeding 500 million barrels across its Greater Lancaster Area. But by 2020, problems emerged. Water cut in one of the two producing wells rose faster than anticipated, and a technical review pushed the oil-water contact level upward by roughly 300 metres. The revision reduced Lancaster’s estimated reserves to a fraction of earlier projections. Hurricane’s share price collapsed, and by late 2022, the company had launched a formal sale process.
Sanjeev and Arani Kumar Soosaipillai Push Prax Into the Upstream Sector
Sanjeev and Arani entered the picture in March 2023, when the Prax Group acquired Hurricane Energy for approximately £249 million. The deal closed in October 2023. For Prax, the acquisition marked its first move into upstream production and a stated ambition to become a fully integrated oil and gas company.
The Hurricane acquisition completed a vertical integration that Sanjeev had long sought. “Our long-term strategy is to be fully integrated across the oil value chain from upstream to downstream,” he said upon closing the deal.
Defying the Odds: The Shared Journey Between the Lancaster Field & The Soosaipillais
In 1974, Shell concluded that Lancaster’s fractured basement held no commercial future. In 1999, two university graduates, Sanjeev and Arani Kumar Soosaipillai signed a lease on a petrol station in St Albans. Neither story seemed destined for much. Yet in February 2025, the 20 millionth barrel flowed from that same reservoir, extracted by a company whose founders overcame setbacks and built it into a $10 billion enterprise. Both the field and its owners had proved the early assessments wrong.
