Oil giant Chevron said yesterday its multibillion-pound North Sea Rosebank development was expected to lead to the creation of 300 jobs out of its Aberdeen base.
The jobs, to operate the deepwater oil and gas field from onshore and offshore, would be in addition to some 150 in-house staff and 200 contractors who will help design and build the development; Chevron’s first operated project west of Shetland.
The firm’s Europe managing director, Brenda Dulaney, said a further 1,000 jobs would be supported in the UK’s oil and gas supply chain as the project was developed.
Chevron is not commenting on when first commercial production is expected, but there has been speculation it could be 2017.
Ms Dulaney said the field – estimated to contain some 240million barrels of oil equivalent – was a good story for jobs and a good story for energy security with 70 Chevron people already working on the project in Aberdeen.
Rosebank is the first to benefit from the UK Government’s £3billion tax allowance for fields deeper than 3,280 feet and with more than 180million barrels of reserves, announced in the March Budget.
Ms Dulaney said the tax relief had been very important in deciding to go ahead with the field, the development of which would include infrastructure to enable other fields to be exploited.
Energy Minister Charles Hendry, who was in the Granite City for a meeting of the fiscal forum – a group set up between Government and industry to discuss fiscal matters – said: “This opens up a new frontier for us and starts to show the potentially huge proportion, a fifth, of the remaining North Sea reserves remain here.
“This will be, for Chevron, its biggest investment in the UK to date.”
Chevron said it had started the front-end engineering design phase of the project – which has yet to get field approval – but that contracts for this work had yet to be issued.
It plans to develop the field, 80 miles north-west of Shetland and in 3,700ft of water, using a floating production vessel with oil offloaded by tanker and gas exported by a pipeline.
Chevron has 40% in the field, alongside Statoil, with 30%, OMV, 20%, and Dong E&P 10%.
Recommended for you
