This month, Infield Systems Ltd. looks at the breakdown of producing field developments which include a subsea completed element.
Taken from Infield’s offshore energy database, which currently tracks over 3,400 producing offshore fields around the world, we see that over 659 fields have subsea completed elements to the development. Figure 1 shows the ratio between the different subsea development types. In total 61% of subsea type field developments are associated with some sort of fixed production platform.
This is almost twice as many projects as subsea completed wells associated with floating developments, which account for 32%.
As a general observation satellite fields tied back to fixed production platforms tend to be smaller developments compared to a floating production development. So the head count in this example will give a distorted view of the market in terms of total number of completions.
As there are some big floating production platforms due to be brought online over the next few years, there is likely to be some change in the profile with satellite developments to floating production units brought online particularly in West Africa. However, this change is unlikely to alter this picture significantly. As with current high oil prices and technology aimed at improving recovery rates, it is likely that step-out, subsea technology will continue to have significant impact on mature basins, to make the most out of existing fixed production facilities.
-Dr. Roger Knight, Data Manager, Infield Systems Ltd.
