PESGB Evening Lecture: September 2020 (Virtual Event)

Optimisation of the Arran Development Plan
Catherine Tonge, Alastair Honey, Dave Webster, James Preston and Caroline Gill

The Arran field is a gas development of distal Palaeocene turbidites located in the UK Central North Sea. Arran will be developed with four horizontal wells with production over the Shearwater Platform host. Two wells will be drilled in the North of the field around a penetrative salt diapir and two into the low relief structure in the Southern part of the field. Shell have a long history of involvement with Arran as a non-operated partner, but stepped in to take over operatorship in 2018 when the previous operator withdrew shortly before sanction.  Subsequently, withdrawal of another of the Joint Venture and a change in equity also caused uncertainty and threatened project delivery. The resulting project timeline was ambitious and required a risk based approach, with an integrated team working across all disciplines in close collaboration to enable the project to be delivered within the terms of the license agreement and to a standard acceptable to both the Joint Venture of Shell UK Ltd, Rockrose Energy and ONEDyas, and to the UK regulatory bodies.

Prioritisation to work on the projects biggest risks was undertaken to ensure the project could pass through FID while keeping the field development plan, cost and schedule as close to that promised as possible. During the subsequent work, post FID, an opportunity was identified to yield a CAPEX reduction by moving the surface locations of the wells which despite the project being in execute has subsequently been realised.

This paper will firstly document the rapid journey through the transfer of operatorship to FID focussing on risk based decision making and subsequently the integrated work needed to realise the cost saving opportunity, balancing the risks of the change against the reward for making it possible.

Thank you to our September Evening Lecture Sponsors:

Arran Joint Ventures:

This event is kindly hosted by:

We have not been granted permission to distribute the recording of this event.