Pyrenees starts pumping
BHP Billiton has brought its Pyrenees oil development offshore Western Australia into production ahead of schedule.
“Given the complexity of the project, the early start-up of Pyrenees is an outstanding achievement and another major accomplishment from our project development and drilling organisations,” BHP Billiton Petroleum chief executive officer Michael Yeager said.
About half the planned 13 subsea wells are ramping up from first oil while the remaining wells will be brought into production over the next six months.
The full project includes a subsea gathering system and the Pyrenees Venture floating production, storage and offloading vessel, which is capable of producing up to 96,000 barrels of oil and reinjecting 60 million cubic feet of gas per day.
“This is the second development operated by BHP Billiton to commence production from the southern Carnarvon Basin offshore Western Australian in a little over two years, following the start-up of the Stybarrow field in 2007,” Yeager said.
“Learnings from the Stybarrow development have been incorporated into the Pyrenees development contributing to the excellent performance.”
Pyrenees is located about 45km off the coast of Exmouth, Western Australia, and about 20km east from the Stybarrow development.
It consists of the Crosby, Ravensworth and Stickle oil fields, which were discovered in 2003 at water depths of 169-250m. The fields are developed with very long horizontal wells drilled from the sea floor and then tied back to the Pyrenees FPSO via an extensive gathering system. Water injection is incorporated to enhance oil recovery.
Gas produced by the development will be reinjected into the reservoir of the nearby Macedon gas field for future recovery.
The project is located in production licence area WA-42-L with operator BHP holding 71.43% while Apache owns the remaining 28.57%.
Part of the Ravensworth field is located in production licence WA-43-L where BHP Billiton holds 39.999%. The joint venture partners in WA-43-L are Apache (31.501%) and Inpex (28.5%).
This separate segment of the Pyrenees project will have its own wells and gathering system.
A commercial arrangement has been made between the WA-42-L and WA-43-L joint ventures, whereby oil from WA-43-L will be produced into the WA-42-L-owned facility via a tie-in agreement. Production from WA-43-L will start later in the 2010 calendar year.
Monday 1 March, 2010
PNN
Monday 1 March, 2010
PNN
