UK heavy oil explorer Xcite Energy has entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with oilfield services firm Baker Hughes.
The MOU sets out principles for the provision of oil field services for the UK North Sea Bentley heavy oil field, which are likely to include the supply of drilling and completion services, well engineering, electronic submersible pumps and reservoir engineering.
Baker Hughes will work with all the key stakeholders in a collaborative manner to develop innovative, field specific technical and commercial oil field services for Bentley, which maximise the economic recovery from the field and the economic return for all stakeholders.
Rupert Cole, Xcite Energy's CEO, said: "We are very pleased that Baker Hughes has joined the Bentley development group and we believe this is a further validation of the viability of this project and demonstrates the continuing progress we are making towards our field development plan. The provision of these key oil field services is an important part of the successful delivery of any project and we believe Baker Hughes has the necessary skills, expertise and track record to support our development group.
"We continue to make good progress with the planned assurance engineering programme and development partner commercial negotiations and remain focused on delivering a robust and compliant field development plan for this valuable asset."
The Bentley field covers about 70sq km, in Block 9/3b, license P1078, 8km southeast of the Bressay field (operator: Statoil), 15km east of the Kraken field (operator: EnQuest) and 20 km north-northeast of the Bruce field (operator: BP).
In April, Xcite announced an MOU with Teekay Shipping for the use of a floating storage and offloading (FSO) facility, to be used for oil storage and offloading on Bentley.
In May, Xcite entered into a collaboration agreement with Statoil and Shell over the Bentley and Bressay fields in the North Sea.
The move could see the two heavy oil fields developed using the same infrastructure and follows the decision to “re-evaluate” the development concept for Bressay in November last year.
In July, Xcite inked an MOU with Aibel for engineering and project management work on an Ove Arup & Partners designed self-installing ACE platform.
Bentley is about 160km east of the Shetland Islands on the western edge of the Viking Graben. Oil reserves are about 257MM 2P, 10°-12° API, according to Xcite.
The license was granted to Xcite under a Promote License in 2003 and converted to a traditional license in 2005.
The field, discovered in 1977, is a four-way dip closed structure of Lower Eocene and Upper Palaeocene Dornoch sandstone reservoir. It has been delineated by nine well penetrations and recent 3D seismic from a 2011 program.
A phased development plan has been outlined to include two 20 slot platforms, with 4-5 laterals per well, with a floating storage and offloading vessel, and further subsea wells.
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