Hurricane Energy has begun the “start-up” phase at its flagship Lancaster field, west of Shetland.
London-listed Hurricane said hydrocarbons were “introduced” to the process system aboard the Aoka Mizu floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel on Saturday.
That is the final stage of the FPSO’s commissioning and gets the start-up phase for the Lancaster early production system under way.
The two production wells on Lancaster will be tested and shut-in so that data can be gathered.
Flowlines will be cleaned and tested.
Hurricane said it would make a “first oil” announcement once both wells have flowed for 72 consecutive hours.
Led by Robert Trice, Hurricane was set up to deliver hydrocarbons from naturally fractured basement reservoirs.
Its assets are in the Rona Ridge area, west of Shetland.
Lancaster is Hurricane’s most appraised asset, with five wells drilled to date.It contains reserves of around 523 million stock tank barrels of oil.
Hurricane is developing an early production system (EPS) to determine whether it should progress to a full-field development at Lancaster.
The EPS is expected to produce about 17,000 barrels of oil per day.
