The development of the Bøyla Field (PL 340) located close to the Alvheim Area in the North Sea, has passed an important milestone towards first oil.
The subsea manifolds for the Bøyla Field are now completed and being transported for installation in the North Sea. Marathon Oil Norge AS, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Marathon Oil Corporation , is the operator of PL 340.
The fabrication of the Bøyla production manifold and smaller Kneler A pipeline end manifold started in Q1 2013 at the Nymo yard in Eydehavn and are now completed and being transported to the Alvheim Area for installation by the vessel “Skandi Arctic” from the Technip’s fleet. AS Nymo is a sub-contractor to the Bøyla EPCI (Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Installation) contractor, Technip in Norway.
“The Nymo, Technip and PL 340 partnership has again delivered successfully the next chapter of the Alvheim Area story. The fabrication of the structures has been completed safely and on schedule, and represents a critical milestone in the busy 2014 subsea installation program,” says Marathon Oil Norge regional vice president Ken Woodworth .
The development solution for the Bøyla Field is a subsea tie-back through existing infrastructure to the Alvheim FPSO (floating production, storage and offloading) vessel. The production fluids from Bøyla will be delivered via a 26 kilometers pipe-in-pipe flow-line to the producing Kneler A’ subsea template. The development concept includes two horizontal production wells and one water injection well.
The drilling campaign will be conducted by the drilling rig Transocean Winner. Alvheim FPSO has a processing capacity of approximately 150 000 barrels of oil per day, and requires only minor modifications to receive and process Bøyla production volumes. The total investment for the Bøyla field development is estimated to be approximately 5 billion NOK.
The Bøyla Field is located in Block 24/9 in the North Sea. The license was awarded in APA 2004 and the initial discovery was made in 2009 (Marihøne prospect). The discovery was verified by to appraisal wells the same year. Plan for Development and Operations was submitted and approved by Norwegian government in 2012. Gross recoverable reserves are estimated to around 23 million barrels of oil equivalent. Production start-up is planned for Q1 2015.
“This is Marathon Oil’s fourth field development in six years, and the Bøyla Field will reinforce the position of the Alvheim Area as a major oil hub in the North Sea,” says Ken Woodworth. Marathon Oil Norge is the operator of the Bøyla Field with a working interest of 65 percent. The other licensees are Core Energy AS with 20 percent working interest and Lundin Norway with the remaining 15 percent.