A North Sea oil field discovered 50 years ago has become Shell’s first newly-operated facility in the region for more than two decades.

Production from the Penguins field, 150-miles north of Shetland, will restart after a four-year pause to update infrastructure. It will have a floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) facility.

The field was discovered in 1974 and was in production from 2003 until 2021. It could yield the equivalent of 100 million barrels of oil over the next two decades, said the company.

Production is expected to peak at the equivalent of about 45,000 barrels of oil per day.

Shell has been given the go-ahead by the Court of Session to undertake preparatory work on the Jackdaw gas field, which it hopes will enter into production next year if it passes the required environmental assessment.

Zoë Yujnovich, Shell’s director for integrated gas and upstream businesses, said: “The UK relies on imports to meet much of its demand for oil and gas. The Penguins field is a source of the secure domestic energy production people need today.”

Although the oil from Penguins would be transported to refineries overseas, some of these refineries supplied refined fuels back to Britain.