Oil major Shell has started oil production from the Gumusut-Kakap floating platform off the Malaysian coast, the company said.

The deep-water platform is also expected to start producing gas over the course of next year, Shell added.

The facility is set to reach an annual output peak of around 135,000 barrels a day.

The Gumusut-Kakap platform is one of more than 20 deep-water projects developed by Shell, including in the Gulf of Mexico and offshore Nigeria.

The Malaysian project is 33 per cent owned by Shell as operator, with ConocoPhillips Sabah also owning 33 per cent. Malaysia’s Petronas Carigali holds a 20 per cent stake and Murphy Sabah Oil a 14 per cent share.

“We are delighted to have reached this milestone with our partners,” Andrew Brown, international director of Shell’s upstream segment said in the statement.

The Anglo-Dutch company is the operator of the project. “Gumusut-Kakap is our first deep-water development in Malaysia, and uses the best of Shell’s global technology and capabilities in deep water,” Brown added in the statement. The company has unveiled a couple of discoveries in the country this year. In August, Shell said that it had struck gas at its deep-water Marjoram-1 well located 180 kilometres off the Malaysian coast in the SK318 block, while earlier this year, it discovered more than 450 metres of gas column at the Rosmari-1 well in the same block.