Northern North Sea News

Esgian has published its Week 49 Rig Market Roundup highlighting new drilling activity in the North Sea and a new licensing deal in Morocco.Drilling Activity and DiscoveriesSerica Energy is continuing with plans for its four-well drilling campaign in the UK North Sea, scheduled for 2024 and early 2025. The campaign will be carried out using the semisubmersible COSLInnovator. All four wells are production wells. The first well in the campaign will be a sidetrack of an existing well (B1z) on the Bittern field.

A new labor forecasting tool (LFT) is predicting around 16,000 additional workers could be needed in the UK’s offshore wind industry by 2030, and 12,000 extra workers will be needed specifically for carbon capture and hydrogen projects by 2027. It also highlights a significant increase in demand for workers in the West of Shetland oil and gas basin.The new resource, the first of its kind to focus on the engineering construction industry (ECI), provides insights into workforce numbers across regions and sectors…

Shell's Penguins FPSO has set sail from China loaded aboard Boskalis' White Marlin semi-submersible heavy transportation vessel.In a social media post on Thursday, Boskalis said: "Boskalis’ semi-submersible transport vessel White Marlin departed from Qingdao, China with an impressive cargo; the 34,000-ton cylinder-shaped Shell Penguins FPSO. After a smooth and safe float-on and [seafastening] campaign, the vessel started her journey to Norway." At the time of writing, the White Marlin was sailing past the east coast of Taiwan…

The construction of the Penguins FPSO for Shell's namesake field in the UK North Sea has reportedly been completed in China.CGTN, the China Global Television Network website, on Thursday, shared a video of the completed Penguins FPSO, and said the 118-meter-tall cylindrical FPSO, constructed by the Chinese Offshore Oil Engineering Co., Ltd. company in Qingdao, had been delivered to "a British client."In January 2018, Shell made a decision to redevelop the Penguins field in the northern North Sea…

Offshore installation and decommissioning contractor Allseas has removed the Ninian Northern jacket in the North Sea in a single lift, showcasing its new jacket lifting system installed aboard its giant Pioneering Spirit vessel.In what was the first deployment of the new jacket lifting technology, Pioneering Spirit removed CNR International’s Ninian Northern jacket from the northern North Sea and transported it intact to shore for recycling.Weighing in at 8100 tonnes, the first commercial lift with Pioneering Spirit’s Jacket lift system (JLS) is one of the heaviest offshore jackets lifts ever…

Edward Heerema is founder and president of Allseas, which brought the world’s largest construction vessel, Pioneering Spirit, to the market. The company, which also brought innovation to the pipelay sector, has added its latest trick to Pioneering Spirit – its jacket lift system. But Allseas is also targeting deepsea mining and has its sights on the offshore wind market. Elaine Maslin caught up with Edward Heerema to find out more.The first time I met Edward Heerema was at the company’s offices in Delft, in the Netherlands.

Chinese shipbuilder Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co. has won a contract to build two CO2 carriers for Northern Lights, a Norwegian carbon capture and storage project.Under the contract awarded by the Northern Lights JV, owned equally by Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies, the Chinese shipbuilder will build two CO2 carriers, each with a cargo size of 7,500 m3 and a length of 130 meters.The two vessels, designed to transport liquid CO2 with purpose-built pressurized cargo tanks, are expected to be ready for delivery by mid-2024. The primary fuel for the ships will be LNG, keeping emissions low.

The UK National Oceanography Centre (NOC) has secured funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), which will take robot submarine ‘Boaty McBoatface’ around end-of-life oil and gas fields. The Autonomous Techniques for infraStructure Ecological Assessment (AT-SEA) project, led by the NOC will trial the concept of using submarines like Boaty for high-tech, low-impact monitoring to pick up any potential environmental impacts at these sites, NOC said.The NOC has received £670…

Pioneering Spirit, one of the world's largest vessels, reached Lerwick Harbour on Friday, August 28, carrying aboard the 14,200 tonne Ninian Northern Platform topside.Prior to the arrival in Lerwick, the giant catamaran had removed the Ninian Northern topsides in a single-lift from a jacket standing in 140 m water depth, at the Ninian oilfield around 100 miles (88 nautical miles) north-east of Shetland.Delivery of the Ninian Northern platform topside marked the inauguration of a new…

Swedish contractor Floatel International has received a new extension from Equinor for its accommodation unit Floatel Superior at the Martin Linge Field Development in Norway’s North Sea.The onshore operational support and supervision company said in a press release that Floatel Superior started its charter at Equinor’s Martin Linge project at the end of July 2018. The contract has now been extended with four months until the end of March 2020.Floatel also said that six monthly options remain in place for the Floatel Superior.Prior to her contract with Equinor, Floatel Superior worked for Total in the Culzean field in the North Sea in…

Data sharing and better understanding of how marine life interacts with manmade structures is the target for the next phase of the Insite program.What to do with offshore structures is a sticky problem for oil companies, regulators and policy makers alike, as many structures are starting to cease production in the North Sea, where some fields have been producing oil and gas since the early 1970s.Regulations, which include the OSPAR (Oslo Paris convention) state that a clear seabed should be left behind, once production has ceased, with some exceptions (platforms over a certain age and weight).

Vryhof Anchors, a Vryhof company, has announced a number of contracts for its’ Stevshark Rex anchoring solution with Anglo-French independent operator Perenco and its Congolese subsidiary Perenco Congo SA; Maersk Drilling in Trinidad; and international EPC contactor CNGS Group. In addition, two Stevshark Rex’s will also be deployed by Jan De Nul Group, a dredging, offshore, civil and environmental contractor.The contracts confirm the Stevshark Rex - with versions ranging from three to 60 metric tons (mT) - as the new industry standard in hard soils…

Fifteen production floaters were contracted in 2017 – 11 FPSOs, two production semis, a wellhead TLP and an FLNG – and the number of deep water projects in the near-term planning queue indicates production floater orders are set to accelerate. This is a big change from 2016 when orders for new units totally dried up and the deepwater future looked pretty bleak. Here’s a round-up of contracts awarded last year and in January 2018. Tempera FPSO - Keppel in January 2017 received a contract from Dixstone Holdings…

Shell announced the final investment decision for the Penguins field redevelopment project in the U.K. sector, which includes the construction of a new-build Sevan Marine designed cylindrical floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel. The Penguins field is in 165 metres of water, approximately 150 miles north east of the Shetland Islands. Discovered in 1974, the field was first developed in 2002 and is a joint venture between Shell (50 percent and operator) and ExxonMobil (50 percent). The Penguins field currently processes oil and gas using four existing drill centres tied back to the Brent Charlie platform. The redevelopment of the field…

Norway's Statoil was the second top bidder for 13 oil exploration leases in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and won six licences offshore Britain, it said on Thursday, in a sign it may be looking to boost reserves after slashing costs. Statoil bid a total of $44.5 million for 13 licences in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, coming second only to Shell and ahead of Hess Corp, Chevron and Exxon, the latest auction results showed. The company said in a separate statement it had won five new operated licences in the northern North Sea and one in the frontier area west of Scotland, committing to drill at least three wells. Statoil said its bids for licences in the U.S.

Petrofac is set to build on its provision of reimbursable services for Total E&P UK following the award of an enhanced three-year contract extension on the Alwyn and Dunbar platforms in the Northern North Sea. The contract, worth in the region of $100 million, comes with two one-year options and has been reconfigured, with Petrofac providing an enhanced range of offshore services. This award builds on a relationship with Total which began in 2005 to support the Alwyn and Dunbar assets, and will secure more than 150 offshore jobs.

The Van Aalst Group has introduced a new motion compensated gangway system under the brand name Safeway. Developed and built in the Netherlands, the Safeway gangway bridge makes it possible for vessels to land at a broad range of offshore constructions, varying from small unmanned installations in the Southern North Sea to large offshore production units in the Northern North Sea. The first Safeway unit is currently under construction under Bureau Veritas class, with the first Safeway unit expected to be available for the rental market by the end of 2015.

In a word, Pieter Schelte is BIG. Founded in 1985, Swiss-based Allseas Group S.A. is specialized in offshore pipeline installation and subsea construction. The company employs more than 2,500 people worldwide and operates a fleet of specialized, in-house designed and developed pipelay and support vessels. The company is known for its daring and imagination in ship design and technological innovation. The newest Allseas vessel, Pieter Schelte, is a huge ship, composed of two super-tanker hulls connected by a wide central work platform or slot, much like a catamaran.

Lundin Petroleum AB, through its wholly owned subsidiary Lundin Norway AS, is pleased to announce that drilling of exploration well 33/2-1 in PL555 has commenced. The well will investigate the hydrocarbon potential of the Storm Prospect in PL555, which is located 200 km west northwest of Florø on the Norwegian west coast and approximately 65 km northwest of the Snorre Field. The main objective of well 33/2-1 is to test the reservoir properties and hydrocarbon potential of the Upper Jurassic Sandstones equivalent to the reservoir in the Magnus field on the UKCS approximately 35 km to the south. Lundin Petroleum estimates the Storm prospect to have the potential to contain unrisked, gross prospective resources of 89 million barrels of oil equivalent (MMboe).

Drilling activity offshore UK is now expected to increase over the next few years as government and industry reacts to the recommendations in Sir Ian Wood’s report – the “Wood Review” – to maximise UK offshore oil & gas recovery advises Douglas Westwood's 'DW Monday' study. From a peak of 396 in 1996, numbers of wells drilled offshore UK fell to 164 in 2013, a low not seen since 1979. Development wells were down from 289 in 1998 to 120 in 2013. Exploration & appraisal drilling, on which offshore production ultimately depends, saw numbers fall from 224 in 1990 to 44 last year. Of these the key driver is of course exploration wells, down from 157 in 1990 to just 15 last year.

Declining North Sea production and increasingly mature assets are expected to drive demand for offshore accommodation support, with the attributed maintenance, refurbishment and shutdown work requiring additional personnel-on-board and workshop capacity, Douglas-Westwood reported. However, the harsh met ocean conditions of the northern North Sea (NNS) ultimately limit Operator choice to two types of accommodation - jackup barges and semisubs – due to the greater stability and safety offered. Despite growing demand for semisub units, the sector is plagued by constrained global supply and limited availability, placing upward pressure on day rates. This is having a significant impact on contract costs in the NNS, with day rates typically ranging from $200-350k.

Declining North Sea production and increasingly mature assets are expected to drive demand for offshore accommodation support, with the attributed maintenance, refurbishment and shutdown work requiring additional personnel-on-board and workshop capacity, according to Douglas-Westwood in their 'DW Monday' analysis. However, the harsh met ocean conditions of the northern North Sea (NNS) ultimately limit Operator choice to two types of accommodation - jackup barges and semisubs – due to the greater stability and safety offered. Despite growing demand for semisub units, the sector is plagued by constrained global supply and limited availability, placing upward pressure on day rates.

Britain's North Sea oil and gas industry faces a bleak future where more fields are likely to become uneconomic and shut in as platforms close - unless costs can be controlled, operators say. For some elderly platforms in the Northern North Sea, time is running out. If the industry does not get to grips with costs quickly, fresh investment is likely to dry up, forcing unsaleable rusting rigs to be abandoned. "From a cost point of view, the chickens are coming home to roost," said Tim Walsh, senior vice president, asset integrity services at Lloyd's Register Energy.