Despite bad weather, Serica wraps up repairs and restarts North Sea field

Following repair and replacement of a subsea control module component, Serica Energy, an oil and gas company, has resumed production from the Rhum field, located in the UK North Sea, despite difficulties experienced during repairs due to stormy weather conditions.

At the end of February 2022, Serica revealed that a fault had been identified in the Rhum subsea control module (SCM), located on the seabed in the vicinity of the Rhum wells, approximately 40km north of the Bruce platform and provides power and controls required to operate the Rhum wells. At the time, this necessitated a temporary shutdown of production at the field.

In an update on Thursday, Serica confirmed the production restart from the Rhum field following the successful operation with a diving support vessel (DSV) to replace a faulty component in the Rhum SCM. The company says that this work was completed without incident despite the difficult weather conditions its team encountered.

Mitch Flegg, Chief Executive of Serica Energy, commented: “This was a difficult operation at water depths of over 100 metres in a period of challenging weather conditions. Our skilled teams onshore and offshore have planned and executed the work programme safely and efficiently. This has been an outstanding effort.”

The firm also informed that production from the Bruce field had continued throughout these operations while its other producing fields – Erskine and Columbus – were not impacted by this Rhum issue. Moreover, during the Rhum outage, Serica’s average net production has been in excess of 15,000 boe/d.

“During the Rhum shutdown we have been able to optimise the Bruce production rates, which has helped to minimise cash flow reduction from this production deferral,” added Flegg.

The Bruce, Keith and Rhum (BKR) assets are owned and operated by Serica, which holds 98 per cent, 100 per cent, and 50 per cent interest in these fields, respectively. The assets consist of over 25 wells, three bridge-linked platforms and extensive subsea pipelines and infrastructure that tie in Rhum, Keith, and the Western Area of Bruce to the Bruce facilities.

Back in January 2022, Serica extended its contract with Odfjell Drilling for operations on the Bruce platform and revealed its plans to undertake a well intervention campaign to boost production from existing wells and drill an exploration well on another prospect in the surrounding area to find more hydrocarbons.