Oseberg switch to low pressure production

Offshore staff

OSLO, Norway --Hydro has contracted Grenland Group for modifications to its Oseberg Field Center processing facility in the Norwegian North Sea.

Pressure has declined at Oseberg following 18 years of oil production and six years of gas exports. To now, oil and gas have entered the first-stage separators on the Oseberg B platform at 67 bar (6.7 MPa).

Hydro wants to modify the facility to allow the oil to head straight to the second-phase separators, where pressure is only 20 bar (2 MPa). Lower pressure production, it says, will allow it to increase oil production by 20-25 MMbbl.

Up to 10 wells will be adapted into second-phase separators. Grenland's $106.7-million contract involves extensive installations of new low-pressure flow pipes and manifolds on Oseberg B and the bridge-linked Oseberg A platform. It will also upgrade existing gas compressors and production trains to facilitate low pressure production, due to start up in fall 2009.

09//18/2007