LNG

The UK-based Prax Group, a company whose business covers exploration and production to refining, has signed an agreement to acquire the interests of TotalEnergies in the UK North Sea Greater Laggan Area comprising mainly gas fieds and the Shetland Gas Plant.

Prax said it was buying the onshore Shetland Gas Plant as well as the French major’s interests in several nearby exploration licences.  The transaction whose value was not disclosed is subject to approval from the relevant authorities.

The Greater Laggan Area fields include the Laggan, Tormore, Glenlivet, Edradour and Glendronach fields and are located about 140 kilometres (87 miles) west of the Shetland Islands.

Current production for the TotalEnergies interests is around 7,500 barrels of oil equivalent per day, made up of about 90 percent natural gas.

Sullom Voe location

The Shetland Gas Plant is located at Sullom Voe and is the collection and gas processing facility for the offshore Laggan-Tormore projects, comprising two large gas and gas condensate fields.

The Laggan and Tormore gas fields are in sea depths of 600 metres (2,000 ft).

The Shetland Gas Plant is also connected to the Shetland Islands Regional Gas Export (SIRGE) pipeline, which is 234km in length with capacity of 665 million standard cubic feet per day.

The SIRGE pipeline provides transportation services for the export of gas from the West of Shetland fields to the UK mainland market.

Prax had previously acquired Hurricane Energy in 2023. This is a UK-based oil and gas exploration and production company with a 100 percent operated interest in the Lancaster offshore oil field in the West of Shetland basin.

“With a strong track record of integrating acquisitions and managing assets in the oil and gas value chain, the Prax Group is a long-standing and trusted partner of TotalEnergies,” explained Sanjeev Kumar Soosaipillai, Chairman and Chief Executive of the Prax Group.

“The announcement of the signing of this agreement is the culmination of many months of solid co-operation between our respective companies,” he added.

UK value chain

“Our strong balance sheet has enabled the Group to execute its growth strategy having successfully completed two major acquisitions last year, and with two other transactions in the pipeline, I am delighted that the Prax Group is able to announce its proposed expansion in West of Shetland, as part of our long-term plan to strengthen our position across the whole oil and gas value chain,” stated the Prax CEO.

Discussing the reasoning behind the sale by TotalEnergies, the company’s Jean-Luc Guiziou, Senior Vice President in Europe for Exploration and Production, said that the transaction was in line with the company’s strategy to continuously adapt its portfolio by divesting mature non-core assets.

“TotalEnergies remains committed to the UK through both its upstream portfolio in the North Sea (Elgin-Franklin, Culzean and Alwyn fields) and its Integrated Power and Renewables portfolio,” Guiziou stated.

The Prax Group is headquartered in the UK and describes itself as a British multinational and independent E&P company and with a distribution and sales unit dealing in petroleum products and bio-fuels.

The Prax Group also has US and Asian offices in Houston, Texas, and in Singapore. 

TechnipFMC, the US oil and gas services company, reported increased profit and revenues as well as a rising backlog of contracts covering areas such as South America, the Gulf of Mexico and Europe.

Nov 6 (LNGJ) - UK major BP said production had successfully started from the Seagull oil and natural gas field in the UK North Sea, boosting energy security and underpinning continued production from an offshore facility that’s been operating for 25 years while supplying more oil to Scotland and natural gas to England.

   The Seagull field has been developed by Neptune Energy, now being acquired by Italy’s Eni, as a subsea tieback to the BP-operated central processing facility of the Eastern Trough Area Project in the central North Sea, around 140 miles (225km) east of Aberdeen. “Oil from Seagull is exported through the Forties Pipeline System to Grangemouth in central Scotland and natural gas to Teesside via the Central Area Transmission System,” said BP. The new field is expected to produce around 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent gross per day at peak production.

The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) is awarding 27 new oil and gas licences aimed at strengthening domestic energy security as a necessary back-up for renewables and to help reduce the mounting import bill for pipeline natural gas, LNG and oil.

A total of 27 licences have been offered in quicker-to-production areas with more to follow subject to additional environmental checks.

According to Offshore Energy UK (OEUK), the trade body for the sector, around 220,000 jobs are supported by the current offshore industry fields.

UK energy data

OEUK has also provided valuable data on the state of the North Sea oil and gas industry and to fill the gap in educated-understanding among sections of the public about the necessity of hydrocarbon energy and its benefits.

Licensing is the first step taken by energy production companies with the regulator to find and produce domestic supplies.

However, each licence does not represent a new oil field. It’s simply that energy companies require licences for a range of activity in so-called “blocks” which are carefully mapped sections of the seabed in UK waters.

These start from seismic and initial exploratory work through to production, either near existing infrastructure in previously known fields or in new fields.

“Licencing is a normal part of most energy production regimes and is used in the UK to manage the development of oil and gas, wind and most recently, carbon capture projects,” said OEUK.

“It is part of a bigger process which companies must undertake to explore, analyse, produce and then eventually decommission energy production,” the group added.

Around 75 percent of the UK’s current energy needs are provided by oil and gas.

The UK is a net importer of oil and natural gas, meaning it consumes more than it produces domestically.

Field numbers

“There are currently 284 active oil and gas fields in the North Sea and by 2030 around 180 of those will have ceased production due to natural decline,” OEUK explained.

The industry, thus, needs the churn of new licences to ensure no cliff-edge is reached in domestic production.

“We all recognise that our energy system must change and our industry includes companies that are expanding into renewables while using their expertise to pioneer ever cleaner energy production,” said OEUK Chief Executive David Whitehouse.

“The reality of the energy transition is that we need both oil and gas and renewables in an integrated system to protect the UK’s energy needs over the coming years,” Whitehouse added.

“Last year filling the fuel import gap cost the UK £117 billion ($142Bln). That’s a lot of money spent supporting the economic growth of other producing countries. With careful management and collaboration, the UK can become the gold standard of energy transitions. We can drive economic growth, reach our climate goals and avoid a future where we increasingly import our energy and export our jobs,” he explained.

The decline of the UK oil and gas industry with the country being a net importer of oil and natural gas by gas pipelines and as LNG after being a net exporter for over 25 years has been further illustrated by Japan’s Mitsui now taking over UK energy pipeline services and technology specialist STATS.

May 19 (LNGJ) - Houston-based TechnipFMC has been awarded a significant contract by European LNG and pipeline natural supplier Equinor to provide riserless light well intervention (RLWI) services on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. “The two-year contract runs from 2024 to 2025, with options to extend for each of the three subsequent years,” said Equinor.

   TechnipFMC said it would provide production enhancement, production data, and pre-plug-and-abandonment services to Equinor using RLWI, which enables well interventions from a monohull vessel, eliminating the need for a riser and the rig required to connect the riser to the subsea well. Instead, remotely operated Well Control Systems are used to facilitate operations on the seabed.

TechnipFMC, the US oil and gas services company based in Houston, was awarded an engineering, procurement, construction and installation contract by UK major Shell plc for the Jackdaw gas development in the UK North Sea to help offset rising LNG imports.

The company said the contract, whose value was not disclosed, covered pipelay for a 30 kilometres tieback from the new Jackdaw platform to Shell’s Shearwater platform, as well as an associated riser, spool-pieces, subsea structures and umbilicals.

The tieback will use pipe-in-pipe technology, which is designed for high-pressure, high-temperature usage.

“We’re excited to embark on this significant project together in the UK North Sea,” said Jonathan Landes, President, of Subsea at TechnipFMC.

“Our strong technical record and our ability to design, engineer, construct and install were key to our success in winning this award,” stated Landes.

Shell in the UK took the final investment decision in July 2022 to develop the Jackdaw gas field following regulatory approvals granted earlier in the year as European countries tried to underpin their domestic supplies hit by the Russian war in Ukraine that led to sanctions.

Development plan

The Jackdaw field is located about 250 kilometres (155 miles) east of Aberdeen, Scotland, and is adjacent to the UK-Norway median line.

The field is 100 percent owned and operated by an affiliate of Shell UK which became part of the Shell group of companies in 2016 after BG Group was taken over.

The Jackdaw development consists of a new Wellhead Platform (WHP), four production wells and the 30km pipeline from the Jackdaw WHP to the Shearwater gas hub.
Peak production from the field is estimated at 40,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Shell said that the UK North Sea remained one of Shell’s core Upstream positions, attracting capital to high margin hydrocarbon projects that can be resilient to commodity price cycles.

The gas from the Jackdaw field will come ashore at the St Fergus gas terminal in Scotland.

The project is expected to come on stream by 2025 and at peak production rates could represent over 6 percent of projected UK North Sea gas production in the middle of this decade.

Shell has said that the Jackdaw gas field was part the company’s broader intent to invest up to £25 billion ($30Bln) in the UK energy system in the next decade.

The company added at the time that the St Fergus terminal that will handle the Jackdaw gas will also be part of the development of the Acorn Carbon Capture and Storage project, which will aim to sequester carbon dioxide from industrial clusters in Scotland, the UK and northern Europe.

Norwegian energy and LNG producer Equinor has been awarded 26 new production licences by Norway’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy in the latest award in predefined areas (APA) with 12 licences as operator and 14 licences as partner.

“Exploration is essential to secure continued value creation on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS),” said Jez Averty, Equinor’s senior vice president for subsurface in Exploration and Production.

“The APA rounds are very important to us and we are pleased about the award of new production licences,” added Averty.

Equinor’s Hammerfest LNG plant on Melkoya island in northern Norway is currently closed after a fire occurred on September 28 2020.

The facility, which supplies European LNG terminals, is expected to re-open in the current first quarter of 2022 after repairs have been completed.

Equinor said that the 26 production licences are divided as follows: 12 in the North Sea, 10 in the Norwegian Sea and four in the Barents Sea, from where Hammerfest LNG receives its feed gas for processing.

“Equinor’s ambition is to transform the NCS from an oil and gas province to a low-carbon energy province,” the company explained.

“In this transformation, oil and gas play a crucial role, both in delivering energy that is critical to society, but also through the expertise, technology and capital needed to realise the transformation,” added Equinor.

Averty said he believed in the NCS and that there is still substantial value to find and develop.

“A good example is our latest discovery, Toppand, which was awarded in the 2011 APA,” he added.

“This discovery shows the potential for value creation on the NCS, even in mature areas, through use of new information and modern exploration technology,” he stated.

“At least 80 per cent of our exploration resources and investments will be concentrated around existing infrastructure - so-called near-field or infrastructure-led exploration,” declared the Equinor executive.

During 2022, Equinor plans to take part in around 25 exploration wells, mainly near existing infrastructure.

Most of the wells will be drilled in the North Sea, some in the Norwegian Sea and a few in the Barents Sea.

Norwegian oil and gas company Equinor, the leading producer and exporter of West European pipeline natural gas and LNG, has brought on stream the third stage of the Troll gas field, extending the production lifespan beyond 2050.

TechnipFMC is continuing its development of challenging hydrocarbon fields as a subsea operator around the world after the spin-off of the TechnipFMC LNG engineering division, now operating as a separate company, TechnipEnergies.