A deepwater drilling project off the coast of Scotland has begun.
Faroe Petroleum confirmed on Monday that drilling had started at the North Uist well, west of Shetland.
The drilling operation will be carried out by BP Exploration, using the Stena Carron drilling rig.
The North Uist well lies nearly 80 miles north-west of Shetland and reaches a depth of nearly 1300m.
The decision to allow deepwater exploration has been criticised by some environmental campaigners, worried about a repeat of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010.
Graham Stewart, Faroe Petroleum chief executive, said: "We are very pleased to announce the spudding of this frontier exploration well in one of our core areas.
"The North Uist prospect offers significant resource potential and is in close proximity to a number of important discoveries on the Atlantic Margin Corona Ridge, including Rosebank and Cambo."
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