BP charters Prosafe unit for UK North Sea job

Oil major BP has chartered the Prosafe-owned flotel Safe Zephyrus to provide gangway connected operations to support the Seagull project at the ETAP central processing facility in the UK North Sea.

Prosafe said last Friday that the firm duration of the contract, starting in 1Q 2022, was 10 months with up to four months of options. The value of the contract firm duration is $35.5 million, and the firm duration including options value is $49.3 million.

According to Prosafe, the Safe Zephyrus is one of the world’s most advanced and versatile accommodation vessels, complying with stringent rules in both UK and Norway.

Safe Zephyrus previously worked for BP on the Clair Ridge platform located West of Shetland under a contract awarded in October 2018. The contract started in May 2019 for a period of five months with a one month option.

The Prosafe-owned Safe Zephyrus, a sister vessel to the Safe Boreas, was built at Jurong Shipyard, Singapore, to the GVA 3000E design and is equipped with a DP3 system and 12-point wire mooring arrangement. Delivered in 2016, it has a large open deck area of more than 1000m2 and two 50 tonne cranes.

When it comes to the project the Safe Zephyrus will be working on, the Neptune Energy-operated Seagull is a high-pressure, high-temperature development located in the Central North Sea approximately 10 miles south of the BP-operated ETAP Central Processing Facility (CPF).

Seagull will be tied back to the ETAP CPF partially utilising existing subsea infrastructure. Gas from the development will come onshore at the CATS processing terminal at Teesside, while oil will come onshore through the Forties Pipeline System to the Kinneil Terminal, Grangemouth.

Sanctioned in March 2019, the Seagull project saw the first step in its offshore execution in September 2020 with the beginning of the subsea construction phase. In January 2021, Seagull partners started drilling on the Seagull project, using Valaris’ Gorilla VI (JU-248) jack-up rig. The drilling campaign consists of four development wells expected to last 18 months.