Statoil ASA has awarded an integrated drilling and well services contract for the Mariner heavy oil field in the UK North Sea to Schlumberger Oilfield UK Plc.
The 4-year contract begins in January and has options for additional 4-year periods. It has 22 service components, including drilling, completion, electrical submersible pumps, cement, fluids, and logistics support.
Mariner is 150 km east of the Shetland Isles. Drilling is expected to start in 2016 and production in 2017. Statoil has 65.11%; JX Nippon Exploration and Production (U.K.) Ltd. 28.89%; and Dyas Mariner Ltd. 6%.
The main Mariner platform will have one drilling rig and one well intervention and completion unit. In addition, a new-build jack up rig will be next to the Mariner installation, working through well slots on the platform for the first 4 years. Over the field’s lifetime, as many as 130 well targets are planned, Statoil said (OGJ Online, Apr. 10, 2013).
Statoil is establishing an integrated operations team in Aberdeen. Gunnar Breivik, managing director for Statoil Production UK, said the company “will be working closely with both the service supplier and the drilling contractor Odfjell and rig contractor Noble [Energy Inc.] to plan and optimize operations.”
Breivik said the contract’s performance-based compensation format rewards “metres drilled and completed rather than usage of time and material.”
The contract with Schlumberger also includes options for the Bressay field, currently in the “concept evaluation phase.”