Offshore staff
LONDON -- The PY-3 field in the Cauvery basin offshore eastern India was shut down on July 5 due to unscheduled repair and maintenance of the offshore mooring facility, according to Hardy Oil.
The company says that adverse marine conditions have frustrated efforts of the contractor to assess and undertake necessary repairs to re-start production. The company hopes to mobilize resources and carry out repairs as soon as possible.
The PY-3 field is located 80 km (49 mi) south of Pondicherry in water depths of between 40 m and 400 m (131 ft to 1,312 ft). The Cauvery basin was developed in the late Jurassic/early Cretaceous period and straddles the present-day east coast of India.
The license, which covers 81 sq km (31 sq mi), produces oil of high quality light crude (49° API). The field was developed using floating production facilities and subsea wellheads, a first for an offshore field in India.
The facility at PY-3 consists of the FPU Tahara, and the 65,000 DWT tanker Endeavor, which acts as a floating storage and offloading unit. There are four subsea wells tied back to Tahara.
Tahara has a three-stage crude oil separation system, with the first two stages being three-phase separators and the third stage a two-phase separator. Actual liquid processing capacity on the FPU is 20,000 b/d with 17 MMcf/d of gas handling capacity.
The field currently produces associated gas in the range of 3.5 MMcf/d. This produced gas is used as fuel gas with excess gas being flared. The stabilized crude oil is pumped from Tahara to Endeavor for storage and offloading to shuttle tankers. Crude oil from the PY-3 field is sold to CPCL at its refinery in Nagapattinam, approximately 70 km (43 mi) south of the PY-3 field.
07/21/2009
