The biggest projects

OE asked Infield Systems to provide insights on today’s biggest offshore oil & gas projects.

Top five global offshore projects currently  under development (by capital spending)

What makes a mega-project in the offshore oil and gas industry? Is it the cost? The size of the reservoir? The number of people or man hours involved? Or how long it will produce for? Any which way you look at today’s mega-projects, they are big, and they are getting bigger, especially for international oil companies.

Infield Systems set out the top five global offshore projects current under development by capital spending, and the top 10 offshore field developments by reserves on stream. Compare the two and you get a very different picture.

The demographic differences between the two are stark. Four of the top 10 biggest fields by reserves on stream, including the top four, are in the hands of national oil companies. The top four are three phases of one field, South Pars, owned by the National Iranian Oil Company. The top eight of the 10 are all in shallow water.

For the offshore projects currently under development, all but one project is in more than 200m water depth, increasing to 1274m for Statoil’s Aasta Hansteen Spar. The projects are dominated by large pieces of offshore infrastructure, be it a concrete gravity based platform offshore Canada (Hebron), a steel jacket supported platform in the North Sea (Mariner) or an FPSO (Prelude and Ichthys).