BP has made two new oil and gas discoveries in the UK North Sea, it
said on Wednesday, giving new impetus to its plans to boost production
in the ageing basin into the middle of the century.
The new
discoveries are also the latest bright spot for the North Sea after a
number of large new fields started up in recent years, helping to
reverse a long and gradual decline in output since the late 1990s.
“These
are exciting times for BP in the North Sea as we lay the foundations of
a refreshed and revitalised business that we expect to double
production to 200,000 barrels a day by 2020 and keep producing beyond
2050,” Mark Thomas, BP North Sea regional president, said.
London-based
BP said it had made one discovery in Block 29/4e in the central North
Sea, named Capercaillie, and another in Block 206/9b west of Shetland,
branded Achmelvich.
Both wells were drilled by the Paul B Loyd Junior rig in summer 2017. The size of the resource was not disclosed.
The
discoveries will help boost production from BP’s recently-launched Quad
204 field in the West Shetlands as well as the Clair Ridge field, which
is due to come into production this year, Thomas said.
With
seven field start-ups in 2017, and five set to start in 2018, BP plans
to boost its production by 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) by 2020, which
will be mostly gas. It produced around 3.5 million bpd last year.
The
company will nevertheless not change its spending plans because of
rising global oil prices and is preparing to approve projects this year
that can make money with prices below $40 a barrel, the head of its oil
and gas division Bernard Looney told Reuters on Tuesday.
NEW FIELDS
And as oil prices recover to around $70 a barrel after a three-year downturn, so is activity in the North Sea.
“The
UK offshore oil and gas industry is stirring back to life, fueled by a
robust uptick in the number of field development projects,” Oslo-based
consultancy Rystad Energy said.
Up to 13 fields in the UK North
Sea are expected to get the go-ahead for development in 2018, compared
with only four in the past two years, Rystad said.
BP is 100
percent owner of Capercaillie while the Achmelvich well is operated by
BP, with a 52.6 percent stake, together with Royal Dutch Shell, 28
percent, and Chevron, 19.4 percent, BP said in a statement.
The
Capercaillie well was drilled to a total depth of 3,750 metres and
encountered light oil and gas-condensate in Paleocene and Cretaceous-age
reservoirs. The well data is currently under evaluation. Options are
expected to be considered for a possible tie-back development to
existing infrastructure.
The Achmelvich well was drilled to a
total depth of 2,395 metres and encountered oil in Mesozoic-age
reservoirs. Evaluation and interpretation of the well results is ongoing
to assess future options.
(Reuters)