Athena steps ahead

Published 08.02.2010 14:57:49 by John Bradbury

Partners in the UK North Sea Athena oil project have agreed to start buying up long lead items to kick off the FPSO-based development.

Operator Ithaca and its partners have agreed to start purchasing long lead items – up to the value of US $14.85 million - and to set up a full project team to plan the development and finalise an Environmental Statement on the development of the field, and work on a full field development plan which is due for submission next month.

Long lead orders will be placed for Electrical Submersible Pumps, subsea trees and engineering support.

Athena is due to be tapped with a floating production storage and offloading vessel and four production wells and one water injector over the Central North Sea discovery which has been previously drilled with the14/18b-15A, 14/18b-16 and 14/18b-18 wells which are currently suspended, and which Ithaca indicates will be re-entered and completed as producers.

“These interventions and the drilling of a water injection well and one further production well will take place in Q4 2010/Q1 2011,” field partner Rheochem which has 5% equity in Athena through a 50% stake in Zeus Petroleum, has indicated.

“Additional wells will be drilled from seabed locations close to existing wells to allow for ease of tie-back to a new subsea manifold.”

Development of Athena will be based on a subsea manifold and 2 km (1.25 mile) 8-inch flowline tied back to a stand-alone floating production unit, and oil is due to be offloaded by shuttle tankers. Gas produced from Athena will be used for power generation on the FPSO.

Offshore installation of the FPSO and related offshore construction is due to take place during the second quarter next year with field production forecast at 22,000 b/d of oil day.

Athena is estimated to contain proved and probably reserves of 24.40 m bbl of oil, based on a report by Sproule International at the end of last year – with 5.49 m bbl of the reserves net attributable to Ithaca.

Ithaca operators the field with 22.5%, and its partners are Dyas UK with 47.5%, EWE Aktiengesellschaft (20%) and Zeus Petroleum (10%).

John Woods, Chief Developments Officer stated “The Athena Joint Venture Partners have seized a window of opportunity to develop Athena, which has been enabled by the recovery in oil price since Q3 2008.”

He went on: “Ithaca as operator of the Athena Development has been working closely with the engineering services sector to negotiate competitive rates that now secure a robust project which is expected to come into production within the next two years.”

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