Offshore staff
LONDON – Premier will participate in an exploration well on the Ravenspurn Deep North gas prospect in the UK southern North Sea.
OperatorPerenco plans to test the deep Carboniferous play underlying the Ravenspurn field.
Premier has a 50% operated interest in the undevelopedTolmount discovery in the same sector. The company is working with contractors to reduce the project’s capex and is targeting a concept selection at the end of this year, to be followed by front-end engineering and design in 2017.
There could be further upside in the Tolmount East and Tolmount Far East structures, with combined prospective resources of 400 bcf.
In the UK central North Sea, the company now estimates capex for theCatcher project at $1.7 billion, 24% down on the originally sanctioned figure, partly due to sterling’s weakness against the dollar (55% of the remaining expenditure is denominated in sterling).
Final tie-ins for the subsea spools were completed earlier this month, concluding the planned 2016subsea campaign. All that remains next year is tie-in of the wells once available from the drilling program, and to support commissioning operations once the FPSO has arrived from Singapore and has been installed.
Work continues to assess the possibility of reducing the overall well count without impacting production. Well delivery is ahead of prognosis in terms of reservoir quality and flow rates and the first well (VP2) on the Varadero template, completed earlier this month, flowed 8,000 boe/d on clean up.
At the Keppel yard in Singapore, 12 of the 13 topsides modules have been lifted onto the FPSO, with the final module lift expected later this month.
As for the Premier-operatedSolan field west of Shetland, which came onstream earlier this year, the second producer well (P2) entered service in mid-August. While initial production capacity from the field was good, output is currently constrained at 10-13,000 boe/d due to lower than anticipated water injection capability, linked to underperformance from P2.
Various options are under consideration to increase water injection into the reservoir, necessary to maintain voidage replacement and to sustain reservoir pressure at higher production levels.
11/23/2016
