For nervous investors looking to dive back into oil, there may be worse places to look than Cairn Energy. The explorer has no production at the moment. It is the silver lining of not having any revenue: your income cannot take a battering from the price of oil.
It is not far off, however. It is the junior partner in the Kraken and Catcher fields in the North Sea (operated by EnQuest and Premier), where production is set to start in 2017. Cairn is fully funded through to when the oil and the cash start flowing, having sold a 10 per cent stake in the Catcher licence last September.
Simon Thomson, the Cairn boss, argues that despite the more pessimistic soundings emerging from the