Valhall passes one billion barrel mark

Aker BP, a new exploration and production player in Norway, has passed the one billion barrel mark of oil equivalents produced at the Valhall and Hod in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea.

Aker BP, the operator of the Valhall field, said on Thursday that the one billion barrels of produced oil equivalent from the field is over three times more than what was expected at the opening of the field in 1982.

Valhall’s oil and gas is produced from chalk reservoirs sitting 2,500 meters below the seabed in the southern part of the North Sea. It was discovered in 1975 and put into production in 1982 with a process and production platform, a drilling platform, and an accommodation platform. Production from the new new process/accommodation platform started in January 2013.

Today, the Valhall complex consists of six separate steel platforms connected by footbridges. Production capacity for oil is 120,000 barrels per day with an average daily production level of about 45,000 barrels of oil equivalents per day during 2016. Valhall also has a gas handling capacity of four million standard cubic meters per day.

The field is powered from shore via a 294 kilometer long DC cable.

Hod, an unmanned wellhead platform which produces via Valhall, has delivered over 75 million barrels of oil equivalents, more than twice the estimated oil at field start-up in 1990.

It is remotely controlled from Valhall which is 13 kilometers away and was the North Sea’s first unmanned platform when production started in August 1990.

Production ceased from the Hod Platform in 2012. Today the Hod license produces from wells drilled from Valhall Flank South Platform.

The company’s partner in both Valhall and Hod is Hess Norway.

Aker BP said that the current well stock comprises of 55 active wells out of a total of nearly 150 productive wells drilled since field discovery.

Eldar Larsen, Senior Vice President of Operations, said: “In 1995, work was performed with the goal to extend the field lifetime and recover more than one billion barrels of oil equivalents. We have now achieved this goal 15 years ahead of what was thought at the time. Our new ambition is to further produce at least another 500 million barrels of oil equivalents.”