Cairn Energy (www.cairnenergy.com) chief executive Simon Thomson has said that his company is keen to make acquisitions in the North Sea, but good deals are hard to find as a result of the severe drop in the price of crude oil.

However, Cairn’s annual general meeting was told that the company expects to generate “plenty of cash” from its holdings in the giant Kraken and Catcher fields, even at current depressed oil prices.

Mr Thomson said: “Our two key development projects — Catcher and Kraken — both remain on schedule and under budget for first oil in 2017, delivering the cash-flow that will sustain our balanced portfolio over the longer term.

“We took the opportunity to increase our equity stake in Kraken to 29.5%, and we continued to build our exploration portfolio with the award of five Norwegian licences earlier in the year, including our first as an operator in Norway.”