AGM Statement

Enterprise Oil PLC
17 May 2001

                            ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

The following is the text of the statement given by Sir Graham Hearne,
Chairman of Enterprise Oil, at today's Annual General Meeting, held at the
Glaziers Hall, London.



For further information please contact:


Patrick d'Ancona, Head of Public Relations                   020 7925 4160
Peter Reilly, Head of Investor Relations                     020 7925 4476





                              Chairman's Speech

                            Annual General Meeting

                    Glaziers Hall - Thursday, 17 May 2001



Ladies and gentlemen,

It is my pleasure to welcome you to this, the eighteenth annual general
meeting of Enterprise Oil plc. It is always a pleasure to see so many familiar
faces on these occasions.

Now before dealing with the formal business of the meeting, perhaps I could be
permitted to make a few opening remarks.

First, it is a special pleasure to remind you that last year was the best in
your company's history. I won't dwell on the group's performance in 2000 as
you will have already seen a detailed account in the Annual Report. However, I
will just mention that with record post-tax profits, our highest production to
date and our biggest reserves base yet, Enterprise's position at the end of
2000 was extremely strong, and 2001 has already seen several successes that
have built on last year's achievements. It is proving to be an extremely busy
year for your company.

We have sanctioned our two operated developments, the Corrib gas field in
Ireland and the Bijupira-Salema oil field in Brazil. Fully-staffed project
teams in Dublin and Rio are progressing both developments towards first
production in 2003.

In Italy work is continuing on the laying of the pipeline linking the oil
centre in the Val d'Agri to the refinery at Taranto. The next phase of
production through the centre is expected in the third quarter of this year.
This upturn in output will mark the fruition of many years of hard work in the
region by both Enterprise and the operator ENI.

In the UK we completed in February the appraisal of the Howe field, which may
be developed as a tie-back to our nearby operated Nelson platform.

Further appraisal work is currently being conducted on the Skarv and Svale
discoveries in Norway, where the group also received three awards in the North
Sea Licensing Round, our strongest performance to date in a Norwegian Round.
Our production in Norway and Denmark currently stands at over 100,000 barrels
of oil equivalent per day, in no small part due to the outstanding performance
of the Jotun field.

In the US our Mensa Deep well, accessed through a farm-in to Shell acreage in
March, is currently being drilled. We will also be drilling a further
appraisal well on Llano this summer, where we have today announced our
assumption of operatorship of the appraisal and potential development of the
field. After further success in the Central Gulf of Mexico lease sales in
March, we are looking to build on our presence in the US. A key part of this
process is the Boomvang development, which is expected to achieve first oil
next year. The SPAR hull is currently being built in Finland and the topsides
fabricated in the US.

Our efforts to strengthen our presence in Brazil's oil and gas industry
received a boost at the start of this year with exploration success in Block
BC-2 in the country's Campos Basin, and we will shortly be spudding a well in
Block BCe-2 in the Ceara Basin.

Our exploration programme for the remainder of the year will see wells drilled
in onshore Greece, offshore Norway, the Faeroes, the US Gulf of Mexico, and
Brazil.

In the first quarter of this year we produced 262,000 barrels of oil
equivalent per day and, with oil prices remaining in the $23-30 range, we have
realised an average price of around $26 per barrel of oil equivalent. Our
production levels have seen renewed contributions from the Banff field in the
UK, where the FPSO vessel returned to location in March and has restarted
production.

As we said at the full-year results announcement, given the improvement in our
balance sheet following the period of sustained high oil prices, we have
initiated a stock buy-back programme. We have always sought to maintain our
capital discipline and our share buy-back programme is part of that approach,
but the delivery of growth and returns remains our key objective, and your
management is totally focused on building a business that can sustain both.

We are Europe's leading independent oil exploration and production company and
will continue to set ourselves the very highest standards. I remain confident
that the group is very well placed to continue to deliver the performance
required for a company with our aspirations.