This paper presents a general description of the UK Atlantic Margin and an overview of the first two developments in the area, BP Amoco's Foinaven and Schiehallion fields.
BP Amoco operates the Foinaven Development on behalf of BP Amoco and Shell Exploration & Production, and operates the Schiehallion Development on behalf of BP Amoco, Shell Exploration & Production, Amerada Hess, Statoil, OMV and Murphy.
It discusses the knowledge and insights we have gained from the experience of bringing these two fields into production and assesses the real value of the innovation in the application of technology and new relationships within the industry which has been central to both Foinaven and Schiehallion. It also introduces the papers which follow in this section:
Development Drilling Innovations for the Foinaven and Schiehallion fields, in the UK Atlantic Margin
Walder DR, Mountford CF, Howes D, Parr RS
Lessons Learned from the Schiehallion FPSO's Design and Construction
Green J.M.
Successful Delivery of Deep water Subsea Developments in the UK Atlantic Margin
Smith T, Pettigrew G, Worsley M, Walls B, Clark E, Brookes D
Deep water FPSO and Subsea Facilities - installation, hook-up and commissioning in Schiehallion, on the UK Atlantic Margin
Dick M (SSOL), Sen P (Fuel), Metcalf P (KOG)
Operating on the Frontier - over two years of FPSO operating experience in the harsh UK Atlantic Margin region
Krafft H (Golar Nor), Thomson L (BP)
Three years ago, BP Amoco presented a similar series of papers to the Offshore Technology Conference, describing the status of our Atlantic Margin activities - progress with the Foinaven project, our plans for Schiehallion, our hopes for further activity and developments in the area and above all how we saw the technological, commercial and environmental challenges which lay ahead.
Three years on, we now have two successful operations in the Atlantic Margin with 18 months experience of production from the Foinaven field and 10 months of Schiehallion production. We are achieving stable production of 85,000 bpd from Foinaven which came on stream in November 1997 and over 100,000 bpd from Schiehallion which began producing last July.
Both fields use similar floating production systems - moored FPSOs equipped with internal turrets and swivel stacks as the most cost effective way of exploiting the relatively shallow reservoirs.
