Activity heats up at Britain’s port in support of giant oil & gas development project

Lerwick Harbour, situated at the crossroads of the North Sea and Northeast Atlantic, has confirmed an uptick in preparations for servicing Equinor’s first development phase of a controversial oil and gas field on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS).

While disclosing an increase in marine support operations as the Rosebank project’s summer campaign gets underway, Lerwick Harbour, as a hub supporting offshore field developments, claims that servicing this project is going well and as planned.

According to the British port, there is a build-up in activity as the weather improves into the busy summer season, representing the second year of a three-year development phase. Captain Grains highlighted: “Such projects are very important for the Shetland supply chain, with a number of local companies involved.”

The update comes shortly after Balmoral Comtec, a Balmoral Group company and provider of buoyancy, protection, and insulation services, also revealed a multimillion-dollar contract with TechnipFMC to support the Rosebank project, spurring the recruitment of over 50 new employees at its Aberdeen headquarters. 

This deal tasks the firm with supplying over 600 buoyancy modules for the project, providing engineering, design, and manufacturing of buoyancy modules from its base in Aberdeen, Scotland. These modules will be installed on flexible risers and umbilicals. 

While TechnipFMC won the integrated engineering, procurement, construction, and installation (iEPCI) assignment in 2023, Optime Subsea got an order in January 2024 for the remote-operated controls system (ROCS) for the Rosebank project. 

This project has faced multiple delays and setbacks, including brushes with the law. The most recent of these came in the aftermath of a judicial review launched by climate campaigners to stop the project.

As a result, the Court of Session in Edinburgh ruled on January 30, 2025, that the previous government’s decision to approve the Rosebank and Shell’s Jackdaw oil fields was unlawful and overturned the decision.

This means the court accepted Uplift’s argument that the government failed to consider the emissions that would be caused by burning the oil and gas produced by these fields when it approved them.

Climate activists are adamant that the burning of almost 500 million barrels of oil and gas, which Rosebank contains, will produce more CO2 than the annual emissions of the world’s 28 lowest-income countries combined.

In addition, Uplift is convinced that burning Rosebank’s oil and gas reserves, located 80 miles (128.75 kilometers) west of Shetland, would create over 200 million tons of CO2, said to represent more climate pollution than the 700 million people living in the world’s low-income countries cause in a year.

While emphasizing that “Rosebank, or any other new oil or gas will harm everyone, except those making millions from big oil,” Izzie McIntosh, Campaigner at Global Justice Now, pointed out: “The evidence could not be clearer about oil and gas: producing more of it is going to doom us to climate chaos, and will do nothing to lower our energy bills.”

Global Justice Now, which blames the burning of fossil fuels for the climate change woes, underlines that more oil and gas will create “an ever more unjust and unstable world,” as climate disasters are on the rise.

McIntosh added: “Oil is mostly exported to be sold on a volatile global market. Governments have little to no power to set the prices for oil produced in their countries. In our current, fossil-fuelled energy system our living standards are left open to the whims of a market where prices can be sent into turmoil or supercharged at any moment. 

“Instead of approving projects like Rosebank, the government should focus on a fast and fair transition to domestically produced renewable energy, and support other countries to create similar systems so that we can all have access to reliable, affordable and safe energy.”

On the other hand, Equinor’s partner in the Rosebank field, Ithaca Energy, has corroborated that the project continues to progress in line with its multi-year development timeline, with estimated first production in 2026/27.

This includes the completion of what is deemed a major subsea campaign with the installation of all nine subsea structures ahead of schedule, in parallel with ongoing FPSO Petrojarl Rosebank, also known as Petrojarl Knarr, modification scopes.

Following the judicial review, the company outlines that the Rosebank JV partnership will prepare and submit the downstream end-user combustion emissions (scope 3) assessment after the release of government guidelines.

Ithaca underlined: “The ruling allows the project to continue in its development phase while the partnership gets ready to apply for and obtain the new consent based on the expected new regulatory guidance.

“We will continue to support Equinor (operator) as we work closely with the Regulators and Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) to progress the Rosebank project, including submitting a downstream end user combustion emissions (Scope 3) assessment in full compliance with the Government’s new environmental guidance, which is targeted to be published in spring 2025.”

Beyond 2025, the firm expects to maintain production above 100 kboe/d in the medium term from its existing producing asset base and the start-up of the Rosebank development, for which Equinor and Ithaca already disclosed a $3.8 billion investment, underlining a decrease in the field’s lifetime upstream CO2 intensity, which is estimated to drop from 12 kg to about 3 kg CO2/boe with electrification.

The field is anticipated to produce 69,000 barrels of oil, or 9,000 tons per day, at its peak, which is equivalent to 8% of the UK’s entire output between 2026 and 2030, along with over 21 mmscf of natural gas every day, the equivalent of the daily use of Aberdeen City.

The Rosebank project is estimated to result in £8.1 billion (over $9.8 billion) of total direct investment, with the lion’s share likely to be invested in UK-based businesses.