Lundin Energy, a Swedish oil firm focused on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, on Tuesday said it had started production from the Extended Well Test (EWT) at its Rolvsnes offshore field, the first subsea tie back development for the Edvard Grieg platform.
The Rolvsnes field is located in a production license on the southern side of the Edvard Grieg field and is a weathered and fractured granite basement reservoir.
During 2018, the drilling and testing of a horizontal appraisal well (16/1-28) was completed, which flowed 7,000 bopd, demonstrating good reservoir productivity.
"The appraisal well has been converted to a development well and tied back the 3 km distance to the Edvard Grieg platform, with the project being completed on schedule and on the budget cost estimate," Lundin said.
The resource estimate for the Rolvsnes field is between 14 and 78 million barrels of oil equivalent (MMboe) gross.
Full field development plan by 2022 end
"The objective of the EWT is to gain a better understanding of the reservoir properties, reservoir connectivity and long term production performance of the field and if successful, this test has the potential to unlock a full field development for Rolvsnes, further extending the plateau production period for Edvard Grieg," Lundin said.
Once sufficient data and production experience has been gathered, a Plan for Development and Operation (PDO) could be submitted by the end of 2022, benefitting from the temporary tax regime in Norway. A successful test could also derisk significant additional resource potential in weathered and fractured granite basement reservoirs on the Utsira High.
Lundin Energy Norway AS, a subsidiary of Lundin Energy, is the operator of the license PL338C with an 80 percent working interest, with the remaining interest held by OMV (Norge) AS.
Nick Walker, President and CEO of Lundin Energy, commented: "One of our strategic priorities is to extend plateau production on Edvard Grieg keeping the facilities full in the long term. We have successfully managed to extend the Edvard Grieg plateau by over 5 years already, through successfully unlocking resources within the Edvard Grieg field and through near field tie-back developments.
"The Rolvsnes EWT is the first tie-back development into our operated Edvard Grieg hub and production data from the EWT will provide vital information to potentially unlock the full field development of the Rolvsnes field, as well as further weathered and fractured basement reservoir opportunities on the Utsira High.”