The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) has granted the licensees of Gullfaks Sør consent for start-up and operation of new subsea wet gas compressor and umbilical on the Gullfaks field in production licence 050, in the northern North Sea.
Statoil is the operator at Gullfaks Sør with 51%. Other partners are Petoro AS with 30%, and OMV (Norge) AS with 19%.
The Gullfaks project is the second major seabed gas compression project that will be initiated, after the NPD granted consent for the start-up of Åsgard subsea compression in July 2015.
“Technology development is a key to improved recovery and extended lifetime for fields on the Norwegian shelf,” says principal engineer Astri Fritsen of the NPD.
“For Gullfaks, this gas compression means extended lifetime and an increase in the gas recovery rate from Gullfaks Sør Brent from 62 to 74 per cent.”
Acording to the NPD, the compressor station and the umbilical installed on the seabed on Gullfaks will push the well stream from templates D, L, M, and N up. The NPD said that production is scheduled to start no later than October of this year.
In addition to accelerating gas production and extending the period when the gas capacity on the Gullfaks C facility is utilised, the new infrastructure will increase the gas and condensate reserves from the reservoirs on Gullfaks Sør Brent and Rimfaks Brent. This also enables the realisation of additional resources in the greater Gullfaks area, says the NPD.
According to Fritsen, the technology can be used on other new and existing fields in the future.
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