Norway's Gullfaks South, Rimfaks and Gullveig fields have now been tied back to the Gullfaks A platform. Production began on 10 October 1998. Innovative technology has been adopted from subsea wellhead to platform. Developed faster and more cheaply than any comparable previous project in the North Sea, these satellites will make an important contribution to continued profitable operation of the main field.

A major goal for this Gullfaks satellites project (GFSAT), operated by Statoil, was to reduce the cost of subsea installations by 40 per cent compared with the group's earlier Statfjord satellites project. This objective has been met. All facilities have now been successfully installed, but not all the objectives for quality assurance of design and fabrication were met. This caused some problems for completion and production operations.

Further development is now under way in the Gullfaks area, covering gas reserves in Gullfaks South and Rimfaks for export to continental Europe. This GFSAT Phase 2 project, due to come on stream in October 2001, will use more or less the same subsea technology as Phase 1 but with some improvements. It again involves substantial modifications to the Gullfaks C and A platforms.

Keywords:
gullfak satellite, gullfak south, platform, operation, artificial intelligence, module, template, manifold, completion, pipe
Subjects:
Pipelines, Flowlines and Risers, Offshore Facilities and Subsea Systems, Formation Evaluation & Management, Risers, Drillstem/well testing
Copyright 1999, Society of Petroleum Engineers
You can access this article if you purchase or spend a download.