UK sanctions two North Sea developments

UK's BP has announced the sanction of two new North Sea developments which are expected to come on stream in 2020.

Alligin and Vorlich are satellite fields located near to existing infrastructure and are expected to produce 30,000 barrels gross of oil equivalent a day at peak production.

Alligin, a two-well development west of Shetland, will be tied back to BP’s Glen Lyon floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel.

Vorlich, also a two-well development in the central North Sea, will be tied back to the Ithaca Energy-operated FPF-1 floating production facility which lies at the centre of Ithaca’s Greater Stella Area production hub.

Incoming BP North Sea Regional President Ariel Flores said: “Through our Alligin and Vorlich developments we are simplifying and accelerating the stages of delivery to improve project cycle time, reduce costs and, importantly, add new production to our North Sea portfolio.

These projects follow on from a period of record investment by BP in the North Sea which helped deliver our Quad 204 project last year and will deliver our Clair Ridge project which is planned to start-up later in 2018."

BP confirmed that it has awarded a major contract for the Alligin development to Subsea 7, which will provide project management, engineering, procurement and construction services for the subsea pipelines. Subsea 7 will deliver the contract from its Aberdeen base with offshore activities expected to get under way in 2019.

Alligin (BP 50 per cent operator; Shell 50 per cent) is a 20-million-barrel recoverable oil field in the Greater Schiehallion Area, located approximately 140 kilometres west of Shetland.

Vorlich (BP 66 per cent operator; Ithaca Energy 34 per cent) will recover over 30-million-barrels of oil equivalent and is located approximately 241 kilometres east of Aberdeen.