Forties Pipeline News

At a special dedication ceremony at the Port of Leith this week, five Sanmar-built tugs were given a traditional marine blessing with their godmothers present. They form part of the large fleet of tugs and workboats operated by Targe Towing Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Forth Ports Limited, which provide towage, emergency response and other services 24 hours a day principally on the Forth and Tay, two of the UK’s busiest waterways, the North East ports of Scotland and offshore.The ceremony also marked…

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…

Loadings of Forties crude at Hound Point terminal in Scotland have resumed, a spokesman for Ineos, operator of the Forties pipeline, said on Friday.   "At the moment, sailings from Hound Point have re-commenced," spokesman Richard Longden said, adding that a vessel had sailed on Thursday.   Ineos had said on Thursday that loading was temporarily postponed due to adverse weather conditions.   Forties is one of five North Sea crudes which underpin the Brent benchmark.   Reporting by Alex Lawler

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.

U.S. oil prices rose above $60 a barrel on the final trading day of the year and hit their highest since mid-2015, as an unexpected fall in American output and a decline in commercial crude inventories stoked buying in generally thin trading. International benchmark Brent crude futures also rose, supported by ongoing supply cuts by top producers OPEC and Russia as well as strong demand from China. Oil prices are set to close out the year with strong gains. Brent is up 17 percent since the beginning of the year and U.S. West Texas Intermediate is up 12 percent.

Pipeline shut on Dec. 11; repair work could last several weeks. Deliveries of crude oil through the Forties pipeline in the North Sea are under force majeure for the first time in decades and operator INEOS said on Thursday there was no timeline yet for repair work that could last several weeks. The 169-km pipeline, which carries around a quarter of all North Sea crude output and around a third of Britain's total offshore gas production, has been closed since Monday, following the discovery of a small crack in part of the system onshore in Scotland. Force majeure, which suspends a company's contractual obligations in the wake of situations that lie beyond its control, is common in oil-producing nations like Nigeria where unrest often disrupts output, but very rare in the North Sea.

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".

Total SA’s Elgin platform leaked gas for a third day in the U.K. North Sea, and neighboring rigs were evacuated to guard against the risk of an explosion. The platform was evacuated and production halted after a “well control problem” caused a leak on March 25. Total has flown in outside experts to help stem the flow of fuel, which prompted Royal Dutch Shell Plc. to move staff from its neighboring Shearwater field. The Elgin and Franklin fields, which send oil and gas through the platform, supply about 15 percent of Forties crude, the biggest component of Dated Brent used to price more than half of the world’s oil. As well as gas, about 23 metric tons of condensate…

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.

There are 2,511 identified pending, probable and possible subsea production wells forecast (base case) worldwide over the next six years. Some 18 percent of these subsea completions will be installed in North America, 30 percent in Africa/Mediterranean, eight percent in Asia-Pacific, 26 percent in the North Sea and 18 percent in Brazil. These subsea projects are in various development stages, including: 23 percent at the pending/construction stage, 11 percent bidding, 9 percent in detailed engineering, 16 percent at the front-end engineering design (FEED) stage, 16 percent of the wells probable and 26 percent possible indicating possible development in the future.

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.