US OIL firm Hess said yesterday it planned to start decommissioning work at four North Sea fields before the end of the year.
The Fife, Fergus, Flora and Angus (FFFA) developments have produced a combined 100million barrels of oil over 20 years, but Hess said they had now come to the end of their commercial life.
The operator, which holds an 85% stake in Fife, Flora and Angus and a 65% share of Fergus, said the main decommissioning work on the fields 205 miles south-east of Aberdeen would be complete by 2016. All fields used floating production vessels.
In a decommissioning programme submitted to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), Hess said FFFA had reached maturity and were “no longer economically viable”.
The firm said pipelines, umbilicals and other subsea equipment would be removed and taken onshore to be re-used or recycled.
John Watson, Aberdeen operations manager for Hess, said: “This is an important project for Hess as decommissioning an asset requires a tremendous amount of skill, care and resources.
“There are a lot of challenges and a lot of stakeholders that need to be involved, but we’re confident that we’re proposing the best way forward to decommission the fields effectively and safely.”
Production at the four developments was suspended in March 2008, but Premier Oil, which holds the remaining interest in the fields, had been given the chance to explore redevelopment options.
Last year, however, Premier said there were no opportunities to extend the life of the developments and agreed to full decommissioning.
Hess said it had estimated the cost of decommissioning FFFA, but said the final cost would depend on engineering studies and the equipment and vessels required to complete the work.
The company would not reveal its estimate, however, and said it would provide details of costs to DECC separately because of the sensitive nature of the information.
Angus was originally developed in 1991, but was suspended two years later.
Production resumed at the field when it was tied back to Fife, Fergus and Flora in 2001. Those three fields came on stream between 1995 and 1998.