Enegi Oil has signed up Arup as new partner for its marginal field consortium after a previous deal with Wood Group was “mired” by the oil price crash.
Enegi has a 50% stake in ABT Oil and Gas (Abtog), which is spearheading the Marginal Field Delivery Consortium aimed at putting in place technology to exploit oil and gas discoveries considered too small to be developed by conventional methods.
Enegi said Arup will bring its project management skills as well as its range of self-installing and redeployable platforms to the consortium, which includes Kongsberg Maritime, Apollo, RMRI, Braemar ACM, AGR and Frames.
Alan Minty, chairman of Aim-listed Enegi and ceo of the consortium, said collaboration agreement with the global engineering and design consultancy marked “the final essential member” of the group.
Minty, Chairman of Enegi commented:
“After what has been a long and often frustrating journey, Enegi is now strongly positioned to take forward and considerably benefit from its investment in Abtog and the creation of the consortium.
“We believe that all the key elements are now in place and expect to add new projects to the portfolio which the consortium has the ability to economically develop, delivering excellent returns on time and on budget.”
In a separate statement, Mr Minty said that the plans for a joint venture with Wood Group had become “protracted” as Enegi’s commercial status became “mired”.
“This all happened against a backdrop of the oil price falling by 50% as well as highly publicised problems for the future of the UKCS such as lack of drilling, high development and operating costs, overly-high adversarial negotiations, and high decommissioning costs,” said Mr Minty.
“The MER Review undertaken by Sir Ian Wood identified many of these issues and embodied the concerns of the industry – issues that we are looking to address through our marginal field initiative.
“The reduction in North Sea activity has been startling, as has the extent of the analyses undertaken by operators, suppliers and government organisations.
“However, there are few disagreements over two critical issues. Plan for the oil price to remain at current levels for the next three to four years at least and, if projects are to be developed, the costs need to be lower.”
The Marginal Field Delivery Consortium is set to announce soon the appointment of a new figurehead.
Recommended for you
