UK: End of the line for Ettrick field after only 7 years of production

Oil company Nexen, a subsidiary of CNOOC, is pressing on with its decommissioning efforts of the Ettrick field located in the UK sector of the North Sea.

According to Bluewater, the owner of the FPSO operating on the Ettrick field, the production from the field was scheduled to cease on June 1, 2016, after which the decommissioning of its FPSO Aoka Mizu would follow.

According to data on the UK’s Department for Energy and Climate Change website, the next step is buoy and moorings removal, scheduled for 2017/8, followed by well plugging and abandonment in 2018/2019.

Bluewater informed in May the company received a contract cancellation from Nexen for the FPSO Aoka Mizu, deployed on the Ettrick field since 2009.

Xodus Group was put in charge of providing Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) services in September 2015, in support of the decommissioning of the Ettrick and Blackbird fields.

Originally discovered in 1981 and brought on stream in August 2009, oil and natural gas from Ettrick is produced through subsea wells that are tied back to the FPSO Aoka Mizu, located about 120 km northeast of Aberdeen in 115 metres of water. Blackbird field also ties back to the Aoka Mizu FPSO.

The FPSO is 248,2 m long, it can accommodate 90 persons, and it has crude storage capacities of 95,000m3 (600,000bbls).

The Ettrick field is operated by Nexen Petroluem that has a 79.73% operated interest, while its partners Atlantic Petroleum and Dana Petroleum have 8.27% and 12% interest, respectively.

The Blackbird field is also operated by Nexen Petroleum with 90.6% interest, while the remaining 9.4% is held by Atlantic Petroleum.

Offshore Energy Today has reached out to Nexen enquiring about the decommissioning progress on the Ettrick field and if the field production has already been shut down.

In an e-mail to Offshore Energy Today, Nexen’s spokesperson said that the focus during 2016 will be disconnecting the Aoka Mizu FPSO, and the cleaning of manifolds and pipelines, which started on 1st June 2016. The FPSO is expected to depart from the field in the third quarter of 2016.

The spokesperson also added: “The dismantling and removal of subsea facilities to onshore is expected to commence 2017 with and the plug and abandonment of wells anticipated to commence the following year. Decommissioning activities will take several years.”

The article has been updated with Nexen’s statement. 

Offshore Energy Today Staff