Page 23: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Jul/Aug 2019)

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REGIONAL REPORT Northwest Europe

Deepwater ... in the North Sea?

Once upon a time, many a year ago, the North Sea was seen as a new deepwater explo- ration frontier. Some may be surprised that it still is. Elaine Maslin reports.

ack in the 1960s, compared with the shallow waters They’re all out on the Atlantic frontier, on the Rockall of the Gulf of Mexico where drillers ? rst got their Trough or in the Faroes-Shetland Trough, west of Shetland. To feet wet, the North Sea was seen as a deepwater date, every single discovery made at these depths remains un-

Bprovince. These days, with operators drilling be- tapped. The problem is these discoveries are in environmental yond 3,600 meters water depth (OE: March/April 2019), and conditions – including the weather, the waves and currents – production established in waters close to 3,000 meters deep, that are on another level to even the northern North Sea, and the water depths here are now taken more for granted. Few the subsurface has proved hard to get to grips with, both in developments go deeper than 500 meters in the UK North Sea, terms of imaging it and drilling through it.

with only Total’s Laggan Tormore development – a subsea tie- back to shore – close to the 600 meters mark. New developments

So, it may surprise some that the industry has been drilling While the environmental conditions are unlikely to change, in water depths well above 1,000 meters, and reaching close to the prospects for new developments out here are. Equinor, 2,000 meters, for quite some time. In fact, the 10 deepest wells which took over operatorship of Rosebank, the UKCS’ largest drilled on the UK continental shelf (UKCS) to date, according undeveloped discovery, with an estimated 300 million barrels to data from the Oil & Gas Authority (OGA), are all in waters (MMbbl), says it plans to reach a ? nal investment decision on deeper than 1,185 meters (see chart). the ? eld in May 2020. It’s been a long time coming – Chevron

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