Premier lifts first cargo of Catcher oil

UK-based independent Premier Oil has lifted the first export cargo of oil of approximately 500,000 barrels from its Catcher development set in the UK sector of the North Sea. 

The development was brought on stream on December 23, 2017, and the first cargo was lifted on Tuesday, January 23. Premier said it had been sold at a premium to Brent.

The second cargo, which is scheduled for the third week of February, has also been sold at a similar premium to Brent.

To date, four production wells – two from the Catcher field and two from the Varadero field – have been brought online. Initial rates from these four producers totaled in excess of 60 kbopd and, as planned, these wells are being deliberately constrained at an average of 20 kbopd whilst final commissioning of the gas processing modules on the FPSO is completed.

According to the company, performance of the BW Catcher FPSO has been excellent with high operational uptime. Commissioning of the water injection system has been completed. Gas commissioning is progressing well with the gas import/export pipeline now fully open to the SEGAL pipeline and booster compression test runs successfully concluded.

The next stages of gas treatment and export compression commissioning will now follow with the switch to fuel gas for the main power generation and ancillary boilers set to start this week. Once the gas systems, including gas export, are fully available, production will be brought on-stream from the Burgman field and full production from the Catcher Area is planned to increase to 60 kbopd. This remains on schedule for 2Q 2018.