BP said on Monday that it had produced its first oil from the Quad 204 project in the west of Shetland region offshore UK, following a US$5.7 billion (4.4 billion pounds) redevelopment.
Production from the project is expected to ramp up through the remainder of this year to a plateau level of 130,000 barrels of oil per day, BP said, announcing the start of production in the area at a time when the North Sea is facing production declines as fields mature.
BP plans to double its UK North Sea production to 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day (boed) by 2020.
Quad 204 is the redevelopment project of the Schiehallion and Loyal fields that were first developed in the middle of the 1990s, with production starting in 1998.
"After 15 years of operating in harsh conditions and producing nearly 400 million barrels of oil, the original Schiehallion floating, production, storage and offload (FPSO) vessel required replacement to enable continued production from the fields," BP said.
The redevelopment would allow BP and its co-venturers-Shell and Siccar Point Energy-to extend the life of the fields to 2035 and beyond.
Apart from the Quad 204 project, BP relies on production from the new Clair Ridge project-expected to begin next year-to lift its UK North Sea output.
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Quad 204 is BP's third out of seven major upstream projects planned for start-up this year. New projects coming online last year and this year are expected to raise BP's production capacity by 500,000 boed net by the end of 2017. By 2020, BP expects around 800,000 boed production from new projects.
Commenting on the Quad 204 project, BP Group Chief Executive, Bob Dudley, said in the statement:
"As one of the series of important, higher-margin major projects that are now steadily coming on line for BP, it also underpins our expectation for growing production and cash flows from our Upstream business over the coming few years."
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Comments
Where the hell do you get your figures from? If you were an engineer you would realise that for this amount of investment you would get an offshore production platform, onshore facilities and a pipeline. Do you really know what you try to report upon?