Norway’s Statoil ASA has recommended the construction of a new drilling and processing platform for extracting the remaining reserves from Snorre field in the North Sea.
Together with Petoro and the other license partners, Statoil has worked to find solution for extending the life of the field to 2040.
An evaluation of the “Snorre 2040” project has been carried out with examination of two development concepts: a subsea development with continued use of the Snorre A and B platforms or a development with a new platform tied in to Snorre A and B.
“The platform solution is the best alternative for maximizing production and creating the greatest possible value,” said Oystein Michelsen, Statoil executive vice-president for the Norwegian shelf.
“Snorre 2040 is an important improved oil recovery project and supports our ambition of achieving an average oil recovery rate of 60% from our fields on the Norwegian shelf,” Michelsen said.
Snorre field reserves are currently estimated at 1.55 billion bbl of oil. The original estimate when the plan for development and operation (PDO) was submitted in 1989 was about 760 million bbl of oil.
“An important contribution to the increase in recoverable reserves came with the decision to install a second platform, Snorre B, on the northern part of the field, and to start reinjection of produced gas from the mid-1990s,” Statoil said.
Currently, the estimated recovery rate from Snorre is 47%, but the field “has an ambition of implementing additional IOR measures that will enable the field to increase the recovery rate to 55%,” the company said.
Michelsen noted, “The change in the petroleum tax rules that was adopted in May also undermines the financial conditions of Snorre 2040, which means that we have to spend more time on maturing the project.”
The final development concept decision is slated for first-quarter 2015.
A new drilling and processing platform also will facilitate tie-in of other discoveries in the area, the company said, adding that these are resources that might otherwise have ended up being not profitable to recover.
Snorre license parters are Statoil 33.27556%, Petoro 30%, ExxonMobil E&P Norway 17.44596%, Idemitsu Petroleum Norge 9.6%, RWE Dea Norge 8.57108%, and Core Energy 1.1074%.