Culzean, an unprecedented offshore gas field project in the UK

[CULZEAN FIELD, BRITISH NORTH SEA, BLOCK 22/25A]

[Claus Vissing-Jorgensen, Culzean Project Director]

Claus Vissing-Jorgensen: Culzean is in the North Sea, 240 kilometers east of Aberdeen. It’s an HP/HT gas development, meaning that it’s high-pressure, high-temperature gas. It’s U.K. gas for U.K. people. It’s around about 5% of the U.K. gas consumption when it comes on stream, so that is why Culzean is a significant project also for the U.K.

[Stuart McAuley, Culzean Facilities Manager]

Stuart McAuley: The field consists of three bridge-linked platforms: a dedicated wellhead platform that we use to drill the wells; a central processing platform, which separates the condensate from the gas and exports it; and then, the accommodation for the operations team. Also, quite unusual for a gas condensate field in this region, we’ve installed a dedicated floating, storage and offloading unit, the FSO, around 3 kilometers away from the main platforms.

The condensate that we produce from Culzean actually has quite a high wax content. That gives us some issues in terms of being able to export that via a conventional pipeline. So, to get over that, what we decided to do was have our own offloading facility, have our own vessel, which is the FSO.

Claus Vissing-Jorgensen: So, Culzean is a Scottish castle and Ailsa, actually the name of the FSO, is not picked by coincidence. That is the name of the island that you can see when you stand on the castle at Culzean and look over the sea.

[~300 MILLION BARRELS OF RESERVES]

[A THREE-PLATFORM COMPLEX]

[30,000 TONS OF TOPSIDES]

[7,000 PEOPLE]

[40 MILLION WORK HOURS]

[CULZEAN: A MEGA-PROJECT]