Forties Pipeline System News

INEOS Forties Pipeline System (FPS) has selected Liebherr for the supply of a new Ram Luffing (RL) series offshore crane for its Unity Platform in the UK North Sea.After more than 30 years of service, the currently installed RL crane on the Unity Platform has run its course, and will be replaced by Liebherr’s RL 650 technology.The RL 650 crane, said to be particularly suitable for a Not Permanently Attended Installation (NPAI), will fulfil all material handling for the offshore platform…

Oil prices posted their strongest opening to a year since 2014 on Tuesday, with crude rising to mid-2015 highs amid large anti-government rallies in Iran and ongoing supply cuts led by OPEC and Russia. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures traded flat at around $60.40 by 1200 GMT after hitting $60.74 earlier in the day, their highest since June 2015. Brent crude futures, the international benchmark, were also flat at around $66.80 after hitting a May 2015 high of $67.29 a barrel earlier in the day.

The shutdown of Britain's largest crude oil pipeline is an early Christmas gift to U.S. exporters shipping to Asia, and a complication for Middle Eastern and African producers seeking to maintain market share in the world's top importing region. The Forties Pipeline System, which carries about 450,000 barrels per day (bpd) from the North Sea to Scotland, may be closed for several weeks for unscheduled repair work, operator Ineos said on Monday. Forties crude is the largest of the five North Sea crudes that make up the dated Brent price benchmark. Brent crude futures jumped 2 percent on Monday to settle at $64.69 a barrel, their highest in 2-1/2 years. But given the price spike is related to an actual physical supply issue, the price of competing U.S.

A man has died after an incident on a North Sea oil platform owned by BP Plc, the company said on Thursday. "BP is deeply saddened to confirm that an offshore worker has died following an incident on the Unity platform," BP said in a statement. It did not name the man but said the man's immediate family had been informed. The Edinburgh-based Scotsman newspaper website said it was understood the death had resulted from a fall. BP's safety record on its oil rigs has been under heightened scrutiny since the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The offshore worker was an employee of British energy services firm Cape Plc. The Unity platform does not produce any oil but is part of the BP-operated Forties Pipeline System (FPS), which brings oil to shore in Scotland.

North Sea Forties crude differentials firmed on Tuesday as traders eyed two potential VLCC shipments to Asia, though gains were capped as the first cargo of Libyan crude was set to load since a deal with rebels to reopen ports. Traders have been watching the progress of two VLCCs - the BW Utah and the Phoenix Vanguard, both of which have been in the frame for arbitrage shipments of Forties to South Korea. The BW Utah left Hound Point on Monday bound for Rotterdam, according to traders and ship tracking data.

Reuters - Britain's biggest oilfield Buzzard will undergo 25 days of planned maintenance starting in late July, its operator Nexen confirmed on Friday. During this period production will be offline but the outage coincides with the planned 14-day shutdown of the Forties Pipeline System (FPS), which is scheduled to begin at the end of July, Nexen said. Buzzard is the largest single contributor to the Forties crude stream, which is one of the four benchmark crudes underpinning the price of dated Brent and Brent crude oil futures. Previously Suncor Energy, which has a 29.9 percent stake in the Buzzard field, indicated that Buzzard would also undergo maintenance in May and September. Nexen said some of this information was "incorrect".

Stolt Offshore S.A. received contract awards and Letters of Intent totaling approximately $120 million from various customers operating in the North Sea. In the UK sector of the North Sea, BP has awarded Stolt Offshore two contracts totalling $12.4 million for construction and installation of the gas import/export system for Clair Phase 1 and the tie-in of the Clair oil export and gas import/export pipeline systems. BP has also awarded Stolt Offshore a contract, valued at approximately $19.3 million, for the design and construction of an 18-inch hot-tap into the 36-inch BP Forties Pipeline System. Stolt Offshore has been issued with a Letter of Intent for the engineering, procurement, installation and commissioning of a 29km 12-inch pipeline system, in the Southern sector of the North Sea.

Freezing weather in the North Sea has forced the shut-in of close to 600,000 bpd of Norwegian oil production and is hemming in another 470,000 bpd of UK output, operators said. Temperatures, which fell far below freezing over the weekend, were up close to zero Celsius on Tuesday and raising hopes that output would resume later in the day for Norway's platforms, which had shut in 400,000 bpd worth on Monday. In the UK sector of the North Sea, the Forties pipeline system was running more than half below capacity at just 330,000 bpd due to an automatic shut-down at the Unity platform. Normal Forties output is about 800,000 bpd. In Norway, Norsk Hydro suffered the most and was losing 300,000 bpd daily on Tuesday.