GLOBAL DATA

April 1, 2006
Europe’s subsea market is expected to increase in the next few years. The number of prospects due to come onstream is likely to peak in 2011.
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Europe¿s subsea market is expected to increase in the next few years. The number of prospects due to come onstream is likely to peak in 2011.
Consideration of prospects may give an inflated view of the market, as it includes many “possible” prospects, which are likely to roll to the right; however there remains considerable room for optimism.

In terms of country split-out of the total number of wells that could come onstream between 2006-2010, 55% are potentially going to come onstream in the UK, and 37% in Norway. Obviously these are the two most important countries.

Others, including the Netherlands, Ireland, and Denmark have only single-figure prospects.

On the UKCS, it is likely that two-thirds of all new subsea wells will be brought onstream as tiebacks to fixed production platforms, most coming from small add-on tiebacks or water injection schemes.

In conjunction with, and to a large extent powering it, is a structural change in ownership from existing majors to smaller operators with lower overheads.

Operator profile of future subsea developments 2006-2010 as predicted in 2001
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This trend is quite marked. Upon review of Infield’s archive from 2001, the view of 2006-2010 was then that 93% of new wells forecast would be under independent oil company operatorship. This compares with the current view of only 49%.

Howard Wright, Analyst, Infield Systems