Wintershall Begins Gas Production in Dutch North Sea

Germany’s largest internationally active oil and gas producer, Wintershall, is continuing to step up its activities in the southern North Sea and is now launching natural gas production from the K18-Golf field in the Dutch North Sea.

By carefully designing the well and deploying a new down hole completion technology, Wintershall managed to set new standards in field development and cost-efficiency for tight gas reservoirs offshore. Wintershall initially plans to produce around 1.0 million cubic meters of natural gas per day from the tight gas deposit via a subsea well (subsea completion). A second production well next summer is set to maintain plateau between 1.0 and 1.4 million cubic meters of natural gas per day. With the production of the field around 250,000 households can be supplied with gas.

“Our investment in the K18-Golf tight gas project once again proves that we still see substantial potential in the Dutch North Sea and plan to tap into this potential,” Martin Bachmann, Member of the Wintershall Board of Executive Directors with responsibility for Exploration and Production, explains. One of the challenges in developing the K18-Golf field is its location in a restricted military zone. For this reason the field had to be developed subsea and within a very short time window. This is also why the production site was connected via a sea bottom pipeline to the platform K15-FA ten kilometers further north. The gas will be treated there to sales specification before being sent to Den Helder on the Dutch mainland via the Wintershall-operated WGT pipeline network.

The K18-G1 well goes down vertically for approximately 3750 meters and then has a horizontal section in the gas bearing sand of about 1400 meters. “We are proud of what we have achieved in developing this first tight gas field by Wintershall in the Dutch North Sea,” Gilbert Van den Brink, Managing Director of Wintershall Noordzee, explains. “The K18-G1 well showed a better reservoir than predicted, and we have high expectations for a firm and durable production from this tight Rotliegend reservoir. This summer we will spud the second production well K18-G4 in the northern extent of the field. Based on the good results of this first tight gas project, Wintershall will focus on the development of more tight gas fields in the Dutch offshore.”

Jan Dirk Bokhoven, CEO of co-investor EBN B.V. comments: “We are pleased to have supported this project that takes us one step further to developing tight gas fields offshore. It proves that a proper development of a tight reservoir can go hand in hand with excellent economic, environmental and safety performance.”

Wintershall has a share of 41.7 percent in K18-Golf. The other com-panies participating are EBN B.V. (40 percent), NAM (15.9 percent), Tullow Oil (2.2 percent) and Oranje-Nassau Energie (0.2 percent). Wintershall was awarded the concession block K18 in 1983. The natural gas field was discovered in 2005.

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LNG World News Staff, March 7, 2012