Lundin Petroleum on Wednesday announced its plans to develop the Solveig oilfield, formerly known as Luno II, offshore Norway, with startup planned in 2021.
The Solveig oil discovery in PL359, is located in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea, 15 kilometers south of the producing Edvard Grieg field. It will be developed via a subsea tieback to the Edvard Grieg platform, involving five development wells with gross peak production of 30,000 barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) per day, according to Lundin's plan for development and operation (PDO) submitted to the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy on Wednesday.
“With first oil scheduled for early 2021, Solveig will be the first subsea tie-back development in the Greater Edvard Grieg Area and is a realization of our strategy of tying back high margin barrels to our operated facilities, as we focus on extending the plateau at Edvard Grieg beyond 2021,” said Alex Schneiter, CEO and President of Lundin Petroleum.
The Swedish company's partners in PL359 include Austria's OMV and Germany's Wintershall.
Lundin said the capital cost of the Solveig development is estimated at $810 million gross ($527 million net to Lundin) and with a breakeven below $30 per BOE. The Solveig project, in the Utsira High area in the southwest of the Norwegian continental shelf, will be implemented together with the Rolvsnes Extended Well Test (EWT) project to take advantage of contracting and implementation synergies, it said.
Solveig phase 1 contains 57 million BOE of gross proved plus probable reserves (37 million BOE net to Lundin). The development scheme involves three horizontal oil production wells and two water injection wells. Lundin said the potential for further phases of development, which will capture the upside potential in the discovered resources, will be derisked by production performance from phase 1.
The contract for the modification of the Edvard Grieg field facilities has been awarded to Rosenberg WorleyParsons, and the subsea system contract has been awarded to TechnipFMC under a lump sum engineering, procurement, construction and installation contract (EPCI).
Drilling work will be undertaken using the high specification, dual capability semi-submersible rig West Bollsta recently contracted from Northern Drilling.
During 2018, Lundin acquired Equinor’s 15% interest in PL359, creating alignment of ownership interests between the PL359 (Solveig) and PL338 (Edvard Grieg) licences. Lundin is operator of both licences with a 65% working interest and the partners are OMV and Wintershall with 20% and 15% working interest respectively.