West Mira rig ready for Wintershall Dea’s Vega field

Oil and gas company Wintershall Dea has received consent from the offshore safety body, the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA), for production drilling on the Vega field using the West Mira drilling rig.

The Vega field is located in the northern part of the North Sea, 28 kilometres west of the Gjøa facility and 120 kilometres northwest of Bergen. The field is developed with three underwater templates – Vega North, Vega Central, and Vega South – tied back to Gjøa.

The Vega South field is a gas condensate field overlain by an oil zone. It produces by pressure depletion with the underlying gas reservoir, providing natural gas lift for the shallower oil zone.

After taking over in 2015, Vega became Wintershall Dea’s first operated subsea field in production in Norway.

The PSA said on Friday that the consent to use the West Mira on the Vega field has a duration of 409 days.

Wintershall Dea holds a 56.25 per cent stake in the field while its partners are Petoro, Spirit Energy, Neptune Energy, and Idemitsu Petroleum with 30, 6.25, 3.75, and 3.75 per cent stakes, respectively.

It is worth reminding that Wintershall Dea recently received consent from the PSA to use the West Mira rig on the Nova field as well.

The oil company contracted the West Mira in June 2018. Should all options for the rig be exercised, it is expected to remain contracted to the German oil company until the first quarter of 2022.

The initially arranged West Mira drilling campaign kicked off with a debut Bergknapp prospect well on Nova in November 2019.

At the time, Wintershall Dea said that the West Mira would move to the company’s nearby Maria field, where it will drill two infill wells.

The PSA said in a statement from March that it had launched an investigation into an incident involving the unintentional disconnection of the lower marine riser package on the West Mira during its operations on the Maria field.

According to the rig’s drilling schedule, the rig will move to the Vega field after completing Maria field ops.

There it will drill one well, go back to Nova for the drilling of six development wells, and then return to Vega to drill two more wells.