Statoil submits Gullfaks Rimfaksdalen development plan

Statoil and partners are investing US$610 million in its latest fast-track project to develop the Rutil discovery that aims to extend the lifetime of the Gullfaks A platform and provide approximately 80MMboe.

Ivar Aasheim, head of field development on the NCS, submitted the PDO for the Gullfaks Rimfaks valley development to Norway’s minister of petroleum and energy Tord Lien.
(Photo: Ole Jørgen Bratland, Statoil)

Rutil is located in the Gullfaks Rimfaksdalen valley development, around 5-15km southwest of the Gullfaks A platform, in the North Sea and is at 135m water depth, 3200m below the seabed.

The development is a four-slot subsea template with two simple gas production wells. The well stream will be connected to the existing pipeline to the Gullfaks A platform and has possibilities of connecting two more wells.

According to Statoil, gas and condensate will be transported in existing pipeline for processing in the gas processing facility at Kårstø north of Stavanger. The processed gas is transported to markets on the European continent.

The partners are expecting production to begin 1Q 2017 with plateau production reaching 31,000boe/d in 2019. It has an expected lifetime of 15 years.

“Statoil is currently implementing a major improvement effort to reduce costs and increase profitability to secure long-term activity and value creation on the NCS,” says Ivar Aasheim, senior vice president for field development on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS). “The Gullfaks Rimfaksdalen valley is a good example of this work.”

The license partners are operator Statoil with 51% interest, along with Petoro (30%) and OMV (19%).​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The main Gullfaks field lies in Block 34/10 in the northern part of the Norwegian North Sea and has been developed with three large concrete production platforms: Gullfaks A, Gullfaks B and Gullfaks C, all of which began production in the late 1980s.

Map from Statoil.
 

The three satellite fields, Gullfaks South, Rimfaks, Skinfaks and Gullveig, have been developed with subsea wells remotely controlled from the Gullfaks A and C platforms.

Rimfaks has been in production since 7 February 1999.

In November, Technip won a Statoil contract for Gullfaks Rimfaksdalen that consists of a subsea tie-back to a new Wye piece on an existing pipeline close to the Gullfaks A platform. The Gullfaks Rimfaksdalen template will be 190km northwest of Bergen, Norway. The contract covers the fabrication and installation of two sections of pipe-in-pipe, total length approximately 9.5km, with a 13% chrome stainless steel production flowline, installation and tie-ins of three spools and an 8.5km umbilical, installation of a 280-tonne template and a 110-tonne manifold.

In September, Statoil awarded Nexans a contract to supply static umbilicals for the Gullfaks Rimfaksdalen gas project. Nexans will manufacture a total of 9km of static umbilicals to be deployed in water depths of about 137m to provide the subsea tie-back between the Rutil and Opal gas discoveries and the existing Gullfaks A platform.

Read more:

Technip wins Gullfaks GRD contract

Nexans umbilicals for Gulfaks

 

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