Bluewater’s Haewene Brim floating production and offloading vessel (FPSO) has been in dry dock for an upgrade at the Nigg fabrication yard in the Cromarty Firth, northeast Scotland.
It is the first time the yard, operated by Global Energy Group, has accomodated an FPSO. It is also a rare sight on the Scottish coastline, with very few FPSOs having docked in Scotland yards in the history of the North Sea.
The work, led by engineering group AMEC, is to extend the life of the Haewene Brim and to enable it to take production from Lundin Petroleum’s Brynhild subsea development, about 210 km off the Norwegian coast (PL148).
The Brynhild project is a four-well subsea development on Block 7 on the Norwegian continental shelf. Two are slated to be production wells and a third will be used as a production well to enhance early production rates. Brynhild will be tied back to the Haewene Brim, which handles production from the Shell-operated Pierce field. Pierce is 38km from Brynhild on UK North Sea Blocks 23/22a and 23/27.
As operator, Lundin began drilling the first Brynhild well from a subsea template in June, using the selfelevating cantilever jackup rig Mærsk Guardian.
Gross reserves at Brynhild, according to Lundin, are 23MM boe. Plateau production is estimated at 12M boe/d, with first oil expected at the end of 2013.
The Brynhild field will operate using a subsea production system (SPS) tied back via a 38km-long, 6in.-daimeter pipe-in-pipe flowline, with a control system on the Haewene Brim.
A riser base manifold, containing isolation valves and a multiphase flow meter module, adjacent to Pierce, will be the commingling point between Brynhild and Pierce.
The common Brynhild-Pierce well flow will then be transported to the FPSO via a renewed 10-in.-diameter dynamic flexible riser for well fluid processing on the Haewene Brim.
Produced gas will be re-injected into the Pierce field. A water injection system will inject treated seawater into both the Pierce and Brynhild fields.
The Hæwene Brim was converted from a shuttle tanker to an FPSO at the Aker McNulty yard in Newcastle in late 1997-1998, and started operating at the Pierce field early in 1999.
The Haewene Brim last drydocked at A&P Tyne’s number 5 dock on Tyneside, England, in 2004, for the addition of a water injection stopides module and hull maintenance, led by a partnership between A&P Tyne and McNulty Offshore Contractors. OE
Image: The Haewene Brim in dock at the Nigg Yard, Cromarty. By Elaine Maslin.
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