Woodside gets go-ahead for two offshore developments

Australian energy giant Woodside has received approval from the country’s regulator NOPSEMA for offshore developments, which will tie back to its North West Shelf (NWS) facilities.

Woodside filed its environment plans for the Greater Western Flank 3 and Lambert Deep development drilling and subsea installation activities to NOPSEMA in June 2020.

In its plans, Woodside proposed to undertake the Greater Western Flank-3 (GWF-3) Development and the Lambert Deep (LD) Development, subsea tie-backs to the GWA and Angel facilities, respectively.

The developments, which have now been approved, will provide additional gas to the Woodside-operated North West Shelf Project.

The activities proposed include drilling and development of three GWF-3 production wells, drilling and development of one LD production well and installation and pre-commissioning of flowlines, production manifold (LD only), umbilicals complete with umbilical termination assemblies, hydraulic flying leads and electrical flying leads.

They also include tie-in to existing subsea infrastructure, pull-in of the LD flowline and LD umbilical to the Angel Platform via existing, unused J-tubes, and pre-commissioning of the new subsea infrastructure.

The Petroleum Activities Program will be carried out using a moored semi-submersible MODU, pipelay vessel, installation vessels and a variety of support vessels, and is anticipated to start in 2Q 2021 and be completed in 2023.

The Petroleum Activities Program is located in Production Licences WA-5-L (GWF-3), WA-16-L and WA-3-L (LD) approximately 128 km north-north-west of Dampier.

The closest landfall to the Petroleum Activities Program is the Montebello Islands, which are approximately 74 km south-east of the Operational Area at their closest point.