Statoil Begins New North Sea Production

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland) - Norway's Statoil ASA (NYSE:STO) (Stavangar, Norway) has announced the start of production at two new oil and gas fields in the North Sea.

Production start-up has begun at the Fram H-North and Svalin C fields, which are expected to yield more than 40 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent (BOE). Fram H-North is located in the Troll area and Svalin C is located in the Grane area. Preliminary estimates show that Fram H-North contains about 10 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent, while Svalin C has just over 30 million BOE.

The new fields mark the eighth and ninth 'fast-track' development projects for Statoil, a system of development that the company has been promoting heavily in recent years.

"Together with partners, authorities and suppliers we have been able to develop standardised technical solutions and methods of interaction that yield increased production from the Norwegian shelf," said Statoil's head of field development on the Norwegian shelf, Ivar Aasheim. "We have achieved a lot with regard to costs, development time and HSE. These are good experiences we will benefit from in Statoil's efforts to increase competitiveness and a long-term sustainable development of the industry. Fram H-North and Svalin C are good, positive representatives of what we want to achieve through the fast-track development concept."

Fram H-North is a standard subsea template that can accommodate four wells, Statoil explained. It is connected by approximately 5km of pipeline and umbilicals to the existing subsea template on Fram West A2. Svalin C consists of a subsea facility with two wells, about 6km southwest of the Grane platform.

The new fields come online just weeks after the official opening of Statoil's Gudrun oil and gas platform, also in the North Sea. Gudrun is the first platform on the Norwegian continental shelf to be operated by Statoil since the Kristin platform opened in 2005. The recoverable reserves on Gudrun are about 184 million boe barrels of oil equivalent (boe) and the platform currently produces 30,000 barrels per day. For additional information, see September 2, 2014, article - North Sea Gudrun Platform Officially Opened.

Anders Opedal, senior vice president for projects at Statoil, said that both fields came in on time and under budget despite encountering technical challenges ranging from drilling and well activities at Fram H-North to delivery of the control system for the subsea template at Svalin C.

"We have succeeded in delivering two new high-quality projects within budget," he explained. "We set lofty goals as regards implementation time for the fast-track development projects, and we were able to reduce the time by about 40% on average. We are on the right track with our mindset regarding standardised technical solutions, early maturing of design basis to avoid late changes and last, but not least, use of the same teams from project to project, where people know each other well and share the same philosophy."

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