First oil flows from BP’s Alligin field

BP has announced the first oil from the Alligin field west of Shetland, operated jointly with Shell.

Alligin forms part of the greater Schiehallion area and has been developed as a two-well subsea tie back into the existing Schiehallion and Loyal subsea infrastructure and the Glen Lyon floating, production, storage, offload (FPSO) vessel.

Oil from the Alligin field will not flow through the Sullom Voe Oil Terminal and will instead go to direct to Rotterdam. BP took the decision to have Schiehallion oil bypass Sullom Voe in 2015.

BP stated that it was “a 20 million barrels of oil equivalent field”, which was originally forecast to produce 12,000 barrels gross of oil equivalent a day at peak.

The project’s performance had been better than expected, however, reaching 15,000 barrels gross of oil equivalent a day at peak since start-up in late December.

The development has included new subsea infrastructure, consisting of gas lift and water injection pipeline systems, and a new controls umbilical.

BP North Sea regional president Ariel Flores said: “Achieving first oil from the Alligin field safely, under budget and ahead of schedule is testament to the performance of the project team and their agile approach to planning and execution.

“Alligin is part of BP’s advantaged oil strategy, a development with a shorter project cycle time with oil that is economic to produce and low risk to bring to market.

“Subsea tiebacks like this complement our major start-ups and help underpin our growing portfolio west of Shetland.”

The Quad 204 project – a redevelopment of the Schiehallion and Loyal fields west of Shetland – first delivered oil in May 2017.

The project included the construction and installation of the Glen Lyon FPSO, a major upgrade and replacement of subsea facilities and an extensive drilling programme.

In December 2018, BP increased its interest in the giant Clair field west of Shetland from 28.6 per cent to 45.1 per cent.

The Clair field is being developed in phases – Clair Ridge, the second phase development, started up in November 2018, targeting 640 million barrels of oil and peak production of 120,000 barrels of oil a day. A third phase, Clair South, is under consideration.