ABERDEEN—The future of the U.K. sector of the North Sea seems likely to be based on developing 350 marginal fields, or fields containing less than 50 Mboe in reserves, if one takes at face value the focus on these undeveloped discoveries during Subsea Expo.

These finds with total reserves of 3.4 Bboe are not new. What is new, however, is that for the first time British authorities have put in place a mechanism to assist the industry in producing these reserves. The recently established Oil & Gas Authority (OGA) has been given powers and the oversight to get these discoveries into production, authority in which its predecessor, the old Department of Energy, did not.

Carlo Procaccini, OGA’s head of technology, told the audience that it not only had analyzed these finds—of which more than 40% (150) have been relinquished and are now unlicensed—based on their locations in the sector, access to existing infrastructure and proximity to each other but it also had carried out four studies based on the use of new or alternative technologies to determine whether they were economically viable.

With recent industrywide cost-cutting initiatives having reduced development costs in U.K. waters by 30% from £18/bbl to £13/bbl (US$22.44 to $16.21), OGA said the studies showed that four of these finds could be developed based on savings of 15% to 28%. The fields have been divided up by development options: extended-reach wells (30), tiebacks (200) and standalone projects (120).

Eric Marston, who is OGA’s Southern Basin and Irish Sea area manager, revealed that the organization has looked at a number of marginal gas fields for ways, most notably cluster developments, of getting gas in these areas onstream. Marston said there is enough gas in the Southern Basin alone to provide 20% of U.K. consumption for another 20 years.

One process that the OGA wants to progress is bringing together a group of operators with nearby finds to help produce reserves.

An example of this approach is the West Sole Catchment area where there are six existing finds and an equal number of prospects, some unlicensed, which are held by four different operators with a total of 11 partners. The large number of licensees often has been seen, Marston said, as a big stumbling block with operators having different development priorities. He added that OGA even has the authority to offer unlicensed finds or prospects to a group to make a development scheme more attractive.

Part of this marginal field initiative is new technology promotion.

The U.K. has a plethora of organizations involved in technology development, but the latest one, the Oil & Gas Technology Center (OGTC), is expected to take a leading role in pushing ideas forward, with its 10-year £180 million ($224 million) budget. A major focus, according to OGTC’s Chris Pearson, will be on wells, which represent 30% to40% of development costs, while another will be on the use of nonmetallic components to provide longer-term asset integrity.

Others also shared technology news during the subsea conference.

Technology Tidbits

Enpro Subsea has supplied BP with its latest subsea modular access equipment to facilitate the development of its Kepler Field in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. The equipment provided included a flow access module for tie-in to an existing manifold and an intervention module for the latter use of scale squeeze. This system allows the tie-in of a single well with a single flowline into an existing looped flowline system.

IKM Subsea expects to have its new R-ROV system in the water this summer for Statoil on its Snorre B Field in Norway. This permanently deployed ROV, which will be housed in its own seabed garage, will have a 1,000-m (3,281-ft) excursion umbilical to allow it to access the seabed complex under this semi-production unit. It is electrically powered, has a variable buoyancy system and will be controlled from shore through the Tampnett fiber-optic seabed cabling system.

One way to save money on projects is to reuse designs that already have been successful. Umbilical specialist JDR has 72 different designs of intervention and workover control system umbilicals that it can offer operators.

—Steve Sasanow