British oil producer Venture Production reported a good start to its 2008 drilling programme with Ensign and Chiswick wells ahead of expectations, as it posted a 43 percent fall in 2007 profit.

"Operationally, we have had a good start to 2008 with the majority of operational issues which impacted 2007 production performance now behind us," Venture said. "We still continue to expect 2008 production to be within our guidance range of 50,000 boepd (barrels of oil equivalent per day) plus/minus 10 percent."

"2008 is also proving to be a much more active year than 2007 from a business development perspective with five acquisitions already announced to date," it said.

Venture, which restated its 2006 results, said in a statement it made a pretax profit of 101.2 million pounds ($203 million) on revenue down 0.5 percent to 358.3 million pounds.

The dividend for the year was raised 20 percent to 12 pence. Venture shares, which have underperformed other London-listed oil and gas producers by 6 percent over the past 12 months, closed at 665 pence on Monday to value the business at 960 million pounds.