LONDON, Jan. 22 -- Norway will lose 1 million bbl of oil production over the next week following the discovery of corrosion damage to a pipe in the flare system on the Statfjord C platform.
Operator Statoil ASA will close down the field as well as the satellites Statfjord East, Statfjord North, and Sygna for at least 5 days.
The main Statfjord complex straddles the Norway-UK boundary and 14.53% of the field is in UK territory. The loss to the UK will be less than 20,000 b/d.
A spokesman for the operator Statoil ASA said, "We are concentrating now on a safe and secure shutdown. After that, we'll have to decide how to repair the damage as well as identifying its cause."
Repairs will be carried out in collaboration with Aker Maritime AS, which holds the maintenance contract for piping systems on Statfjord. How long the work will take is uncertain, but Statoil is planning for a 5 day shut down.
Statfjord production is not included in the Norwegian government output cuts as the field straddles the Norway-UK boundary and has been exempted from the production cutting agreement because of the UK's refusal to cooperate with OPEC.
Statoil as operator has 44.34% of the field, ExxonMobil Corp. 21.47%, Norske Conoco AS 10.3%, Norske Shell AS 8.55%, Conoco UK Ltd. 4.84%, Chevron UK Ltd. 4.84%, BP Exploration Co. Ltd. 4.84%, and Enterprise Oil Norwegian AS 0.89%.
Statfjord is one of the North Sea's biggest producers. It came on stream in November 1979. At one time it was producing 800,000 b/d from its three fully integrated concrete platforms. Only 10% of its original recoverable reserves of 3.6 billion bbl of oil remain and recoverable gas reserves are now estimated at 12.7 billion cu m, compared to the original estimate of 56.1 billion cu m.
