Dana Petroleum has informed that the first oil has started flowing from its Western Isles development in the UK North Sea.
Western Isles (Dana 77% and Cieco 23%) is now producing from the Harris and Barra oil fields in the Northern North Sea, 160 km east of the Shetlands and 12 km west of the Tern field.
With an investment of approximately $2 billion by the project partners, Western Isles is Dana’s largest ever project. The Western Isles development is expected to produce up to 44,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day when fully on production, adding over 30,000 barrels (net) to Dana’s daily production, the company explained.
Dana chief executive Roy Elliot said: “The safe start-up of Western Isles is a proud moment and a great achievement for Dana and our owner the Korea National Oil Corporation – and it demonstrates our ongoing commitment to the North Sea.
“We thank all of our staff, contractors and project partners who have worked so hard to bring Western Isles to this point. We now look forward to many years of safe and reliable production.”
The Western Isles development consists of production and water injection wells tied back to a new build floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) with oil export using shuttle tankers.The cylindrical FPSO measures nearly 90 meters at its widest and weighs over 28,000 tonnes, with the capacity to produce 44,000 barrels of oil a day and store 400,000 barrels in its tanks.