Bad weather has slowed work to replace riser sections damaged when an FPSO came off station.
The Rubicon Vantage FPSO drifted into an exclusion zone designed to protect the Bualuang oil field production infrastructure in the Gulf of Thailand in bad weather, earlier this year.
The Rubicon Vantage’s mooring chains came into contact with, and damaged, a production riser. Production was immediately halted and a full inspection has now been completed by divers.
Replacement riser sections and piping spool materials are at the site, but, following the loss of several working days, due to further bad weather, production is now expected to restart in early February, not mid-January, as planned.
Development drilling on the rest of the field is not impacted by these events, and two new production wells have been drilled and completed since the field was shut-in. The new wells will start production as operations resume.
Salamander is investing in the Bualuang oil field, in Block B8/38. In 2012, it installed a new production platform.
New power and processing modules are being constructed, and are due to be installed on the Bravo wellhead platform early this year. This will aid plans to replace the Rubicon Vantage FPSO with a floating storage and offloading vessel (FSO), to reduce costs.
The new FSO, which will be installed later this year, will have a turret mooring system with 360 degree swivel capability, with no need for an exclusion zone, and hence the risk of this kind of incident being repeated will be removed.
Salamander has signed an LOI with Teekay for an FSO, scheduled to be on location in mid-2014.
It is drilling 16 new development wells on the field, as part of a program started in 2012, to grow production by at least 50%. It also planned to drill six exploration prospects on the nearby G4/50 license.
For the development drilling, Salamander is using the Atwood Mako jackup rig.
According to Salamander, the Bualuang oil field has 46MM bbl recoverable 2P reserves. There is thought to be a further 12MM bbl of resources in reservoirs above and below the main T4 reservoir.
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