The Markham project is unremarkable by most current project benchmarks. It is not a marginal field and it is being developed with essentially conventional technology. It does however differ from most conventional developments in several key areas.

  • It is the first field to be developed which straddles the UK/Netherlands median line and needed a treaty. A coordinated response from both the UK and Netherlands governments was therefore required to ensure that a treaty would be in place in time for production to commence on schedule.

  • It is the first field involving the export of UK gas to continental Europe. It is also one of a very few fields in the UK or Netherlands to produce gas under various contracts.

  • The reservoir quality varies in a general North West-South East direction across the UK/Netherlands median line. This led to concerns that distribution of recoverable reserves would be different to that of Gas-in-Place. This resulted in a variation on standard equity determination methodology.

Its geographic location is noteworthy in that it lies along the northern margin of the Rotliegendes sandstone fairway at some distance from any other known Rotliegendes field of a significant size.

Keywords:
reserves evaluation, agreement, redetermination, platform, society of petroleum engineers, eastern lobe, kingdom, development well, contract, government
Subjects:
Reservoir Characterization, Reserves Evaluation, HSSE & Social Responsibility Management, Safety, HSSE management systems, Safety risk management
Copyright 1994, Society of Petroleum Engineers
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