Alpha Petroleum Resources Ltd., London, updated its development plans for Cheviot oil field in the UK North Sea.
In March, Alpha Petroleum reported the selection of a floating production, storage, and offloading vessel as the basis for the field’s development (OGJ Online, Mar. 19, 2015).
Alpha Petroleum says that it has decided to include Jurassic Padon gas field and Palaeocene Peel and Poppy oil fields as part of Cheviot’s development. It is envisaged that Cheviot will serve as an infrastructure hub to some of the more than twenty additional discoveries and prospects in vicinity of the field, the company said.
Following the decision to use an FPSO, Alpha Petroleum has finalized the field’s basis of design and also completed the selection process for a pre-front-end engineering and design study. Alpha Petroleum has let the pre-FEED study contract to Xodus Group.
Results from the pre-FEED work will be incorporated into the field development plan and environmental statement to be submitted to the Oil and Gas Authority in September, Alpha Petroleum said. FEED tenders will be issued before yearend, and awarded in first-quarter 2016.
Alpha Petroleum remains on track to achieve Cheviot field project sanction no later than first-quarter 2017 and to start oil production in 2020, it said.
Cheviot, a redevelopment of Emerald field in the northern part of the sea, lies on Blocks 2/10b, 2/15a, and 3/11b. Privately owned Alpha Petroleum has increased its estimate of recoverable oil from the field to at least 55 million bbl basing the estimate on the potential of combining reinjected produced gas and water injection with optimizing well numbers and well lengths.
