November 29, 2012
The Bentley field, located to the East of the Shetland Islands is one of the largest undeveloped oil fields in the North Sea. The field contains an estimated 550 million barrels of heavy oil in place.
Due to the low oil price in the 1980’s and a lack of technology and cost efficient solutions, the field had been lying dormant since the early 1990’s, before Xcite Energy (Xcite) was awarded the license to develop it in 2003. Following the successful completion of flow tests in 2010, Xcite approached Teekay for innovative ideas to support the Pre-Production Extended Well Test (EWT) in order to further appraise the field.
Teekay developed an innovative proposal and nominated the DP 2 Shuttle Tanker Scott Spirit. The vessel was prepared for the job and in June 2012, all the necessary arrangements were installed and stores, provisions and bunkers taken onboard. The vessel was to operate on Dynamic Positioning for the entire duration of the EWT, as the field did not have any mooring arrangements installed.
On July 5th 2012, the vessel connected to a 1.8 km long flexible pipeline which was linked to the rig Rowan Norway, ready to receive the oil. 73 days later, Scott Spirit had approximately 210,000 bbls of export quality Bentley blend crude on board – the test was successfully completed.
Xcite confirmed that all targets were achieved safely and expediently, noting that the successful EWT marked a turning point in the future commercialization of the Bentley field.
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