Repairs ongoing as North Sea FPSO’s production levels drop

September 10, 2025, by Melisa Cavcic

UK-based upstream oil and gas player Serica Energy has revealed a downturn in production volumes from a floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel, which is deployed at its North Sea asset on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS). Things are expected to improve by month-end once the unit’s repairs are out of the way.

Dana-operated FPSO Triton lies approximately 6 km to the northeast in the UK Central North Sea; Source: Tailwind Energy

After a restart of the FPSO Triton in July 2025, Serica confirmed the first oil lifting last month, as production kept increasing in line with the previously stated plan, with the resumption of production from certain wells on the Bittern field followed by wells on the Evelyn, Gannet E, and Guillemot West fields being brought online.

Following FPSO restart, North Sea operator achieves first oil lifting

Exploration & Production

The ramp-up helped wider portfolio production reach over 55,000 boepd in mid-August. However, Dana Petroleum, as the operator of the FPSO, which has since notified Serica of a temporary reduction in production while further maintenance takes place, has also stated that subsea intervention work on the Bittern field has been scheduled for November 2025.

Thanks to the resultant production deferrals, Serica’s production guidance for 2025 has been reduced to 29,000 to 32,000 boepd from the previous 33,000 to 35,000 boepd. The UK firm claims that work is currently underway to deliver two compressor operations, which will facilitate the full ramp up of production at the FPSO.

As production is currently running at a significantly reduced rate due to a vibration issue within the compression trains on the FPSO Triton, normal production operations are expected to resume around the end of September, upon the completion of the required repairs.

While production net to Serica from this FPSO reached over 25,000 boepd in August, running with two compressors can deliver an increase from this figure through the addition of production from the EV-02 well on the Evelyn field, while the work on the Bittern field subsea infrastructure, which is scheduled to take three weeks to complete, is expected to address an emerging vulnerability.

This work scope, which had previously been removed from the outage in summer 2025 and was expected to be completed in 2026, will take place in November this year. Given the location of the pipework, in addition to the Bittern field, this will also halt production from the Evelyn and Gannet fields, resulting in a temporary reduction of over 20,000 boepd net to Serica.

Located in Block 21/30, approximately 120 miles (193.12 kilometers) east of Aberdeen, the FPSO Triton produces oil and gas from the Bittern, Clapham, Pict, Saxon, and Guillemot area, with fields tied back to the vessel via subsea facilities comprising a series of pipelines and manifolds.