Multiphase meters provided an elegant solution to a pair of financial riddles on projects in the Gulf of Mexico, representatives of the Canyon Express and King Kong developments told attendees at the Deep Offshore Technology conference in Marseille, France.
Canyon Express, a development of three otherwise uneconomical fields, combines production from the Total-operated Aconcagua, BP-operated King's Peak, and Marathon-operated Camden Hills fields in the Mississippi Canyon section of the Gulf.
"The idea came that we could develop everything together, and it made sense," said Jean-Louis Geyelin of Total about the novel approach. "We don't think that we could have achieved that somewhere else in the world."
He called the oil- and gas-oriented business environment of the Gulf of Mexico key to bringing the trio onstream.
But first, the different operators had to figure out how to credit the production arriving at the Williams-operated Canyon Station, and the partners had to convince the US Minerals Management Service that the solution was safe and fair, he added. The meters monitor output from each well, similar to the function Mariner Energy wanted for its operated King Kong and Yosemite fields in the Green Canyon area of the Gulf.
Cory Loegering of Mariner said the independent needed the meters because the wells in the three blocks that make up the two fields fell under different fiscal patterns. Mariner, which installed its meters a little earlier than the ones for Canyon Express, was able later to unitize the fields, and the MMS granted royalty relief, he added.
"The meters didn't take on quite the role for us as they did for the Canyon Express guys," Loegering said.
Also on that project, Mariner installed the manifold from the back of an MSV.
"The success of our operation led us to expand this by running trees from MSVs," he said.
11/19/03