ConocoPhillips gets start-up consent for North Sea redevelopment

Oil major ConocoPhillips has secured consent from Norwegian authorities to start up the Tor II field facilities located in the North Sea offshore Norway. The field start-up is expected in 4Q 2020.

The Tor II project, located in the Greater Ekofisk Area, is a redevelopment of the Tor field, which was on production from 1978 through 2015 when it was shut down.

In the summer of 2019, ConocoPhillips and its partners submitted a plan for development and operation (PDO) for a new development of the field, called Tor II.

The plan was approved by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy in the autumn of 2019.

The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate has now granted its consent for the start-up of the Tor II facilities from 1 November 2020.

The redevelopment has also been approved by the Norwegian offshore safety agency, the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA).

“Tor is the first field on the Norwegian shelf with a complete redevelopment, receiving consent to start up after having been shut down. We are satisfied that the licensees have found solutions for even better utilisation of the resources in the Tor field”, says Arvid Østhus, the NPD’s assistant director of development and operations – North Sea.

Tor II comprises two new subsea templates to be installed on the Tor field and tied in to Ekofisk, about 13 kilometres away. Eight new production wells will be drilled.

TechnipFMC was put in charge of delivery and installation of a subsea production system including installation of umbilical, rigid flowlines and associated subsea equipment.

The recoverable reserves were estimated at 10 million standard cubic metres of oil equivalent (Sm3) in the PDO.

Operator ConocoPhillips plans start-up in the fourth quarter of 2020, in line with the description in the PDO.

“Tor II shows that shut down fields can create significant values if they are redeveloped. We have produced oil and gas on the NCS for nearly 50 years, and the industry has undergone enormous development through this period. That’s why it’s so great that fields once shut down because they were not profitable can become profitable again today”, said Østhus.