First oil has been produced from Hibernia oil field off Newfoundland 1 month ahead of schedule and about 18 years after its discovery.
Start-up came on Nov. 17.
The project on the Grand Banks involved more than $5.819 billion (Canadian) in preproduction costs by a group of companies including Mobil Oil Canada Ltd., Chevron Canada Ltd., and Petro-Canada Ltd.
Harvey Smith, president of the Hibernia development organization, said production will be slowly increased through the end of this month until the initial well is producing at projected capacity of 20,000 b/d. A second well is scheduled to begin production by yearend.
The Hibernia platform has design capacity of 150,000 b/d and at plateau will average production of 135,000 b/d. The field, 196 miles east-southeast of St. John's, Newf., in 262 ft of water, was discovered in 1979 by Chevron Canada Ltd. A gravity-based production platform system (GBS) was constructed onshore and towed to the production site last summer.
The change was based on a review of the company's worldwide experience with extended reach and horizontal drilling, water and gas injection, and seismic profiles of the field's two reservoirs.
Hibernia's reservoirs, a Cretaceous Hibernia sand at 3,700 m and Cretaceous Avalon at 2,400 m, hold a combined 3 billion bbl of 32° gravity, low-sulfur oil in place.
The review suggests that of Mobil's 135 million bbl increase, more than 50% will come from Avalon, which is farther from the GBS, and the rest from the Hibernia sand.
Hibernia owners are Mobil 33.125%, Chevron Canada Resources Ltd. 26.875%, Petro-Canada Ltd. 20%, Canada Hibernia Holding Corp. 8.5%, Murphy Oil Canada, 6.5%, and Norsk Hydro AS 5%.
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