Offshore staff
HAMBURG, Germany – DEA has commemorated 30 years of incident-free production from the Mittelplate oil field offshore northern Germany.
According to a recent telephone survey by opinion research group forsa, two-thirds of the population of the state of Schleswig-Holstein are in favor of continuing production from the Wadden Sea tidal flats via the drilling and production island.
Mittelplate produces 1.3 MM metric tons/yr (1.43 MM tons) of crude oil for Germany’s domestic needs, higher than the 0.8 MM metric tons (0.881 MM tons) the country imported last year from Saudi Arabia.
Around 1,000 jobs are linked to the development, which has also provided more than Eu1.2 billion ($1.39 billion) to the economy of Schleswig-Holstein in royalty revenues.
Geologists suspected potential oil off the coast of Schleswig-Holstein in the mid-1950s, and this was later confirmed by drilling of the Mittelplate 1 well in August 1980.
Construction of the Mittelplate island started in June 1985, with production beginning in October 1987. Supplementary offshore extraction followed a further development phase, getting under way in 2000.
The eastern flank of the reservoir has since been developed using deviated wells. Following commissioning of a pipeline link and of the T-150 drilling rig, the island underwent further modernization measures in 2005.
10/31/2017
