The Galoc oil venture in the Philippines, which started up in October, deferred a shipment due to be delivered in early February because of a shutdown for repairs.

Production is scheduled to resume by mid-February after the mooring system at the vessel used at the field has been fixed, Nido Petroleum Ltd., a project partner, said yesterday in a statement to the Australian stock exchange.

The $115-million project off Palawan province, which is set to almost double Philippine oil output, stopped pumping last month because of bad weather, damaging the mooring system on the production vessel in the process. The venture has so far delivered three cargoes of crude to refiners in the Philippines and South Korea.

The work on the mooring system will include modifications to improve the ship’s stability in poor weather, reducing the frequency of disconnections from the field, Nido said.

“We expect this modification to increase the operating range of the station-keeping system and have a significant positive effect on the production operations and overall uptime as a result,” said Nido deputy managing director Joanne Williams.

The Galoc field, which holds proven and probable reserves of 23.5 million barrels, is operated and majority-owned by Galoc Production Co., a venture comprising Rotterdam-based commodity trader Vitol Group and Australia’s Otto Energy Ltd. Nido, Philodrill Corp. and Oriental Petroleum & Minerals Corp. are among other partners in the project.

Rubicon Offshore International, the owner of the Rubicon Intrepid production ship, is carrying out the repairs, Galoc Production said in a separate statement sent to the exchange.

Galoc Production said it expects to resume oil production by mid-February as soon as repair works are completed.

It said it delivered a third oil shipment of approximately 200,000 barrels in late December, adding that the cargo reached its buyer in Korea in early January. Alena Mae S. Flores and Bloomberg