Offshore staff
LONDON – Development drilling has started on Neptune Energy’s Fenja subsea field development in the Norwegian Sea.
This is the company’s first operated greenfield project on the Norwegian shelf. The field, holding an estimated 97 MMboe, will produce around 40,000 boe/d at peak through the host Njord-A platform.
Erik Oppedal, the company’s director of Projects and Engineering in Norway, said: “The aim of these first geo-pilots is to gain a better understanding of the reservoir and to optimize the location of the production wells.
Fenja is 120 km (74.6 mi) north of Kristiansund in a water depth of 320 m (1,050 ft). The 36-km (22.3-mi) electrically trace-heated pipe-in-pipe subsea tieback to Njord will be the world’s longest, the company claims.
Development calls for two subsea templates with six wells, comprising three oil producers, two water injectors and one gas injector. The gas injector will be converted to a gas producer toward the end of field life. In response to delays resulting from the impact of COVID-19, the partners agreed that drilling should be performed in three phases over the next two years.
This arrangement should also provide greater flexibility to respond to any subsurface derived gained from the geo-pilots.
Drilling for 2020, managed by the semisubmersible West Phoenix, will include two top holes and two geo-pilots, with an expected duration of 85 days.
First production from Fenja is expected to follow by 4Q 2021.
Other partners are Vår Energi, Suncor and DNO.
04/28/2020
