The floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel for the Catcher field in the UK North Sea has arrived in the Cromarty Firth.
It left the Keppel Shipyard in Singapore in August and is on its way to start a seven-year fixed-term contract with field.
Operator Premier Oil. Extension options mean the FPSO, owned by Norwegian firm BW Offshore, could potentially be in use on Catcher for 18 years.
BW Catcher was built in Japan and converted for use in the North Sea in Singapore.
It can process up to 60,000 barrels of oil a day and store 650,000 barrels. It has a design life of 20 years of uninterrupted operations. BW Offshore was awarded the front-end engineering study in 2012.
The Catcher development covers three fields – Catcher, Burgman and Varadero – 100 miles east of Aberdeen. The asset is thought to contain about 96million barrels of oil.
Premier has a 50% stake, alongside Cairn Energy and Mol Group, each with 20%, and Dyas (10%).
When fully complete the £1.3billion development will comprise 20 subsea wells which will be tied back to the FPSO.
Companies including Premier, EnCore, Wintershall, Nautical Petroleum and Agora Oil and Gas announced their Catcher discovery in June 2010. At that time, it was thought the central North Sea field may contain up to 300million barrels of oil.
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