Spirit Energy prolongs North Sea field life with new gas find

Oil and gas company Spirit Energy has found more gas at its Grove field located in the UK North Sea, which will prolong the field life to at least 2028.

The Grove field is situated on the UK Continental Shelf close to the UK–Netherlands median line. The Grove field and Grove North East are operated by Spirit Energy (92.5 per cent) and RockRose is a licence partner (7.5 per cent).

Spirit Energy informed on Thursday that the Grove North East development well (49/10a-G7) encountered carboniferous reservoir units at the target depth, with around 250ft (gross) gas-bearing B & C sandstones present. The reservoir quality, sand thickness, and gas column height are within the pre-drill expectations and G7 was completed for production.

Girish Kabra, Spirit Energy’s Director for the North Sea operated assets, said: “We achieved first gas from the well on 25 August. The production is in line with subsurface prognosis and pre-drill estimates.

“The commercial discovery is important for Grove as it opens up future growth opportunities in and around the licence blocks. The discovery adds volumes and prolongs the Grove field life from 2022 to at least 2028”, Kabra added.

The well targeted an unappraised northeastern segment of the Grove field. The volume range will be updated after the well has been onstream for a while and production data are gathered and analysed.

Spirit drilled the well using the Maersk Resolve, a heavy-duty jack-up rig from Maersk Drilling. The jack-up is slated to work for Ineos, also in the North Sea, in 3Q 2021.

Kabra said: “The project was sanctioned in a relatively low gas price environment in 2020 to support the supply chain activities through the Covid pandemic. Drilling was made possible by efforts of our team and supply chain partners to reduce drilling costs and through the re-use of facilities, which also contributed to lowering the carbon intensity. The Grove well demonstrates the ability to deliver life extension opportunities in the North Sea basin, as we did with the Chestnut and York fields”.

Gas from the Grove field is processed at the Markham J6-A facilities operated by Spirit Energy and transported via the West Gas Transport pipeline system to the Den Helder terminal in the Netherlands for further processing.