PETROFAC, the international oil and gas facilities service provider, said yesterday it had already sold two tanker cargoes of oil totalling just above 1million barrels from the West Don and Don Southwest fields north-east of Shetland.
It also said it estimated gross production this year of between 3-5million barrels, with the range in its estimate accounted for by potential weather-related interruption to remaining well tie-back activities and offshore tanker loading.
Production from West Don began at the end of April, followed by Don Southwest at the start of July. Petrofac, which is operator of the Don fields, said the drilling and tie-back operations of two production wells and one water injection well on West Don had been completed successfully.
It added that one production well had been on-stream since April and had been producing at gross rates of around 6,000 barrels per day (bpd) without gas lift. Production from a second well began last Friday. At Don Southwest, Petrofac said drilling operations of two production wells and two water injection wells had been completed successfully, with one production well on-stream since July 1.
Petrofac said that during drilling of the Don Southwest water injection wells it had drilled two pilot holes into adjacent reservoir structures, both of which discovered oil.
One of the pilot holes was drilled into an area known as Horst, finding excellent reservoir quality, and this will be developed in due course.
The two fields have been unitised, with Petrofac holding 27.7%, First Oil 19.275%, Nippon Oil 18.5%, Valiant Petroleum 17.275% and Stratic Energy 17.25%.
Also yesterday, Valiant Petroleum said that because of a delay in commissioning of the Don fields it was revising downwards its 2009 production guidance given in April. Valiant said it now expected to exit the year with around 10,000bpd of production capacity. It added that it remained very positive about the potential and future growth of the Don area.
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