Tag: North Sea

New platform support vessels (PSV) BP announced it has ordered four new platform support vessels (PSV) to help deliver its long term business strategy in the North Sea. The vessels will be deployed to support its West of Shetland (WoS) and Norwegian operations and be delivered between the winter of 2013 and summer of 2014.The purpose built and highly specified vessels have been designed to provide long term support to BP's North Sea business and will provide the capabilities BP requires to deliver its strategy more efficiently and safely. The vessels will have oil spill response capability and special tanks to transport fluids required for planned enhanced oil recovery (EOR) schemes.Performance and safety will also be further improved by having dedicated crews on long term hire, minimising turnover and enhancing familiarity with BP's processes.Trevor Garlick, Regional President for BP North Sea, said, "Our long term commitment to the North Sea gives us the confidence to make major investments in vital support services. These new vessels will provide BP with a number of safety and commercial benefits, as well as allow for the greater deployment of technology. Improving our capability to recover more oil from our reservoirs is crucial to the ...

Greenhouse gas emissions and hydrocarbon contamination lower than expected While the Elgin North Sea natural gas leak that was plugged on Wednesday was a massive financial blow for its operator Total, it appears the incident had little impact on the environment in terms of global warming and local marine life.The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) says it estimates that during the 52-day leak, Elgin released the equivalent of 47,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, or 18,000 tonnes more than would have been released during normal operations of the well.The greenhouse gas impact was mitigated when Total was able to slow the leak of natural gas from 200,000 cubic metres a day at its start to around a third of that in mid April, and then down to 50,000 cubic metres by the time the well was stopped with heavy mud on 15 May.A Decc spokesman said:"The provisional total UK emissions of the basket of six greenhouse gases covered by the Kyoto protocol, including the offshore sector, during 2011 was 549.3m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, or approximately 45.8m tonnes per month.""The Elgin release therefore represents approximately 0.1% of the UK's monthly emissions total. Only considering the increase in emissions ...

Work to stop leak on Elgin platform, which involved pumping heavy mud into well, has been a success The near two month crisis around a gas well on the Elgin field in the North Sea appeared to have been averted on Wednesday with French operator, Total, saying it had succeeded in plugging the leak.Shares in the company rose more than 2% on the announcement that no more methane was being released into the environment and the company can soon put a halt to its relief operations which have been costing it $3m a day."A major turning point has been achieved," said Yves-Louis Darricarrere, Total's head of exploration and production, but the company said it was too soon to say when gas and condensate production could resume.The Elgin platform used to pump about 3% of Britain's total gas output from nearly four miles below the seabed, and the incident comes on top of production problems elsewhere.Safety issues in Yemen and a gas leak in Nigeria have been putting a brake on the company's target of increasing its global output by 2.5% through to 2015.The oil world is very nervous of offshore incidents after BP's Macondo oil well spill in the Gulf ...

North Sea could become major renewable energy hub Britain's North Sea has the potential to lead the world in offshore wind and carbon capture and storage technology, British Prime Minister David Cameron said as over 20 companies signed a deal to turn the region into a major renewable energy hub.Major utilities such as Britain's Scottish Power and Norway's Statoil, manufacturers ranging from Siemens to Gamesa and supply chain companies are supporting a plan to develop the offshore wind potential of the North Sea, provisionally named Norstec.Further details about the operations of the network will be revealed at an offshore wind conference in London in June."This (will) make the North Sea again a source of investment ... (It) has the potential to lead the world in offshore wind and carbon capture and storage," Cameron told ministers from 23 countries attending a two-day clean energy summit in London on Thursday.The Crown Estate, which manages Queen Elizabeth's property holdings, also said it would explore whether offshore wind test sites can be set up in even deeper water, which could open up the energy potential of more of the North Sea.Britain has an ambitious target of installing 18 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind power ...

EU Regulators lack experience and competence Recent incidents in the U.K. North Sea have highlighted the dangers faced by workers as ageing oil and gas installations reach the end of their productive lives, but while greater scrutiny by operators is required, proposed new regulation by the European Union could actually increase the risks of a serious accident, the country's main offshore union said Wednesday.More than two hundred Total SA (TOT) workers were evacuated from the Elgin platform last month after a huge gas leak was detected onboard, while last weekend a fire broke out in a Nexen Inc. (NXY) processing unit on the giant Buzzard field.These events have served to shine the spotlight on a long-standing issue, but the best way of ensuring future worker safety is to continue developing the local system of employee and industry engagement and not to hand over responsibility to the EU, which has no experience or competence in this area, said National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers regional organizer Jake Molloy, whose proposed resolution on this matter was adopted by the Scottish Trade Union Congress in Inverness Wednesday.Molloy, who described the move as "ill-conceived and poorly thought out," said workforce involvement had ...

An explosion waiting to happen?

During the last three months There have been 69 reported incidents of oil and chemical spills in the North Sea during the last three months, figures have revealed.A total of 18 companies have been named in the table of incidents published by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The most recent one reported was the Total gas leak at the Elgin platform on March 25, with its status described as "under review".Oil & Gas UK, which represents offshore companies, said the leaks were "relatively small" and many of the chemicals "benign".BP and Shell were among the companies listed, with BP reporting the highest number of incidents at 23. Other companies included EnQuest, British Gas and Nexen.The DECC published the details of all oil and chemical releases since January 1 on its website. Around half of the spills were chemicals and the other half were different types of oil, including crude oil and diesel.Dr Richard Dixon, the director of WWF Scotland, said: "People will be shocked to learn that there have been so many spills in such a short time."Operating in the North Sea is tough but the companies involved should be ashamed of this catalogue of faulty valves, ...

Animation from a Taiwanese company illustrates

Total reported they have discovered the source of the natural gas leak French energy giant Total reported on Thursday that they have discovered the source of the natural gas leak.Four days after the Elgin platform was hastily evacuated, Total said gas was emerging from a wellhead on the deck of the rig after rising 4,000 metres (13,100 feet) up a disused well from below the seabed.Total said one option it was considering was to plug the well from the top using mud, but that would require a team to get on to the abandoned platform which is currently engulfed in a low-lying cloud of gas.Experts have warned of the risk of an explosion if the gas comes into contact with a flare left burning when the 238 crew were evacuated from the rig 150 miles (241 kilometres) off eastern Scotland on Sunday.Total continued to insist on Thursday that there was little danger of an explosion because the wind was blowing the gas away from the flare, which is burning less than 100 metres above the leak on the deck of the platform.The spokesman said the flare would carry on burning "until all the gas is out of the system", which ...

A 'well from hell' A cloud of explosive natural gas boiling out of the North Sea from a leak at Total's abandoned Elgin platform forced wider evacuations off the Scottish coast on Tuesday as the French firm warned it may take six months to halt the flow.Dubbed "the well from hell" by a Norwegian environmentalist who said the high pressure of the undersea reservoirs in the field made it especially hard to shut off, a plume of gas was visible over the platform, officials said, and a sheen of oil, also produced from the rig, was spreading over the water. Officials imposed an air and sea exclusion zone around the platform, which had been pumping 9 million cubic metres of gas per day or three percent of Britain's natural gas output and lies some 150 miles (240 km) east of the city of Aberdeen.A senior Total manager said the firm was looking at two main options - drilling a relief well, which could take six months, or the faster - potentially riskier - alternative of sending in engineers to "kill" the leak affecting a platform that also accounts for some 5.5 percent of Britain's total oil production. But, Total manager ...