The Stybarrow oil project involves a nine-well subsea development and a floating production storage and offtake (FPSO) facility, the Stybarrow Venture with capacity of about 80,000 barrels of oil a day.

BHP Billiton petroleum chief executive Michael Yeager said the $US760 million project had come onstream ahead of schedule and was Australia’s deepest offshore development to date at a water depth of about 825m.

“This achievement reflects a solid work plan that was well executed. We have an experienced project team of BHP Billiton and major contractors and congratulate them on this fine work,” he said.

“We expect this high level of performance to continue into our production phase.”

First oil for the Stybarrow Venture - a disconnectable, double-hulled vessel - comes from the Eskdale field, which is a single well tie back to the adjacent large Stybarrow field followed by production from Stybarrow’s wells.

Full ramp-up and production is expected to take several months.

Discovered in February 2003, the Stybarrow field and adjacent Eskdale field have estimated recoverable oil reserves of 60-90 million barrels.

The estimated economic field life is 10 years.