Restart of North Sea FPSO underway

June 30, 2025, by Melisa Cavcic

With repairs out of the way, the UK-based upstream oil and gas player Serica Energy has revealed the progress made in resuming production from its assets in the North Sea, as wheels are in motion to bring a floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) back online.

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

Following the shutdown of production in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn at Serica’s Triton cluster, which is achieved via the Dana Petroleum-operated FPSO Triton, the extent of damage the storm caused to one of the cargo tanks led to the conclusion that the vessel needed to be repaired.

While critical repairs were originally expected to be completed in time for the production to resume mid-to-late March 2025, the timeline changed, pushing the restart of production to May 2025. Afterward, the production resumption was bumped to the end of June to finish the annual maintenance program.

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Exploration & Production

According to Serica, the repairs have already been completed, alongside scheduled maintenance work; thus, the process to restart operations at this FPSO is ongoing, with production due to begin shortly.

The output is set to ramp up as each field tied back to the unit is brought back on stream, following the normal post-maintenance start-up schedule, with a stable production level expected to be reached next month.

While the FPSO Triton was delivering 25,000 boepd net to Serica immediately before the shutdown, this figure has the potential to be boosted through the addition of production from two new wells, both of which were said to be delivered on schedule and under budget during the Triton downtime.

These are the W7z well on the Guillemot North West field (Serica: 10%) and the EV02 well on the Evelyn field (Serica: 100%). The shutdown enabled extensive repairs to the inert gas marine system, with over 100 components on the system either replaced or refurbished.

Furthermore, topside modifications were made in readiness for the start of production from the Belinda field, expected in early 2026. In addition, Serica highlighted that significant safety-critical maintenance work was undertaken on the firewater system, while valves and sections of pipework across the FPSO were replaced.

As this segment is now complete, the normal start-up sequence has begun in the UK Central North Sea. The work that has been done is anticipated to improve the operational performance of the FPSO Triton going forward, with no further planned outages in 2025.

This FPSO, located in Block 21/30, approximately 120 miles (193.12 kilometers) east of Aberdeen, produces oil and gas from the Triton hub, which encapsulates eight producing oil fields.

The names of the fields tied back to the vessel via subsea facilities comprising a series of pipelines and manifolds are: Evelyn, Bittern, Guillemot West and Guillemot Northwest, Gannet E, Clapham, Pict, and Saxon.