Spirit Energy, the E&P joint venture which combines Centrica’s E&P business with Bayerngas Norge, has launched a video of the decommissioning plans for the ST-1 platform in the southern North Sea.
Spirit Energy said that the ST-1 platform in the Greater Markham Area reached the end of its economic life after producing gas for more than 20 years.
According to the video, the platform was put in warm suspension mode in 2017 with all wells shut in and disconnected. The facility is currently hydrocarbon free and the second phase of decommissioning in March 2018 entails the plugging and abandonment of the wells by the Paragon B391 jack-up. The operation takes around a hundred days to complete.
Spirit has already hired two Solstad Farstad-owned platform supply vessels to support the Paragon B391 rig.
To leave a clean seabed, the wellheads will be severed three meters below the seabed, and the pipeline will be cut 60 centimeters down in July 2018.
The removal of the topside and jacket will be completed via two single lifts on the vessel Stanislav Yudin, and the completion of all decommissioning operations is expected in September 2018.
The Markham field was discovered in 1984 and extends over license blocks 49/5a and 49/10b on the UK Continental Shelf and license blocks J3b and J6 on the Netherlands Continental Shelf.
The ST-1 was installed in 1994 and is a normally unattended installation (NUI) supported by a four leg steel jacket in a water depth of 31m. Primary control is exercised from J6A.
The platform comprises six wells and a single installation connected via two pipelines to the Markham J6A platform in the Dutch sector. A cessation of production justification was submitted to authorities on April 22, 2016.
Offshore Energy Today Staff