Engineering news
Technologies to improve the recovery of oil and gas from the troubled North Sea industry will focus on small pools, innovations in well construction, and advances in inspection methods to manage the integrity of ageing facilities, trade body Oil & Gas UK has confirmed.
Production on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) is enduring a difficult time due to the near 50% drop-off in the oil price over the past year. Oil & Gas UK warned last month that critical infrastructure in the North Sea sector was doomed if the government did not act soon. The performance of the sector last year was its worst since the 1970s.
Technology will play a key role if the industry is to survive, said Oonagh Werngren, Oil & Gas UK's operations director. A technology efficiency drive would have been necessary even without the oil price decline, she added. Werngren said the focus on small pools – or small discoveries – was important because “they characterise a high percentage of the remaining resources on the UKCS”. She added: “They provide the best potential for achieving progress within a short timeframe.”
Werngren said costs were currently too high to extract more than one billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) discovered resources that exist in small oil and gas accumulations on the shelf. She told PE: “The goal is to find technology that will focus on improving recovery at a lower cost, through better use of proven appraisal and production technology, to enable developments of fields up to 10 million boe gas or 30 million boe oil at a cost of less than £100 million.”
Oil & Gas UK said that academia, industry and bodies such as Innovate UK and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council were well-placed to work on the necessary technologies. One of the technology areas that may be exploited further is robotics, or remotely-operated vessels (ROVs). “Robotics would be useful to help the industry operate in the UKCS – a mature province with ageing assets which require innovative technology to obtain more accurate inspections of installations, improve safety and achieve cost efficiency,” Werngren said.
She said using remotely operated robotic and autonomous devices would help to improve the safety of inspections in hard-to-access areas offshore and increase accurate monitoring of the structural health of offshore assets, ensuring that oil and gas continues to be safely produced.
“There is consensus that a fundamental change in mindset is required.”