Until recently, Phillips Petroleum Co. Norway used a picture of a fat, happy fish as a logo for huge Ekofisk oil and gas field in the Norwegian North Sea.
Now the emblem has been redesigned. The "echo fish" of the future is lean and expressionless.
In March, Phillips submitted a revised redevelopment plan, Ekofisk IIA, to Norway's Ministry of Industry & Energy for approval (OGJ, Mar. 21, p. 39). This modified two earlier proposals in line with low oil price expectations.
"The biggest threat to Ekofisk is the 12-15% operating cost rise each year in a period of stable or declining oil prices," said Rolf Wiborg, deputy managing director of Phillips Norway.
"We are currently spending 4-6 billion kroner ($556-820 million)/year in operating costs. This must be drastically cut. Ekofisk IIA would slash operating costs to 2 billion kroner ($270 million)/year."
The IIA plan requires a new wellhead platform with 40-50 well slots to be installed in 1996. Wiborg said design of the wellhead platform was to begin last week because Phillips has little time to meet the 1996 deadline.
DEAD PLATFORMS
Wiborg said, "After 1998, every thing north of Ekofisk Charlie platform would be dead. Some fields' production would be closed down, so it is likely only three Ekofisk group fields would be producing in 1998.11
Remaining Ekofisk area production and third party oil and gas would be routed in 1998 to a new processing and transportation platform. In 1999 the remote Ekofisk Alpha and Bravo platforms would be shut down.
By 2010, when the current production license expires, only the new platforms plus Ekofisk Charlie and 2/4-K platforms and a water injection jack up would be in use, along with a new quarters rr or platform.
Phillips hopes the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate will allow existing platforms to be abandoned long after production is finished. The goals are to cut costs and keep field work to a minimum during production.
LAST PHASE
By 2010 there would be no benefit from water injection in Ekofisk, Wiborg said. Final production would use reservoir compaction, which caused Ekofisk's subsidence in the first place, to drive out remaining oil and gas.
Gas from Statfjord, Gullfaks, and Heimdal fields currently goes to Emden, Germany, via Ekofisk Center.
Norway's Statoil proposes two bypass options, one of which it san,s could be on line in 1996-98: a 150 km pipeline link from the Statpipe line north of Ekofisk to the B-11 compression platform on the Norpipe line or a shorter pipeline making a detour of the Ekofisk subsidence area.
"If we knew that third party gas would go around Ekofisk, it would give us an extra degree of freedom in redeveloping Ekofisk," Wiborg said.
"The new fish symbol is slim and trim, which is the way we see future Ekofisk production. Some people here have been drawing a different symbol, though, just a fish head and skeleton. TheN, say the sharks got us."
