The UK’s offshore regulator has approved further drilling at Shell’s Penguins project, expected to begin this month.
The London-listed supermajor (LON:SHEL) applied to drill the 211/13a- 18 (PC-04) production well at Penguin East in late March, securing approval from the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning (OPRED) on 5 April.
Located around 150 miles north-east of Shetland, the Penguins project is a redevelopment of a former tie-back field to the Brent Charlie hub.
Drilling will be undertaken by the semi-submersible Ocean Endeavour rig and is expected to take around 100 days to complete.
Work is set to begin in April 2023, with the approval direction covering a period from 10 April 2023 to 31 December 2023.
Over that time the rig is set to drill a series of 17 1/2″, 12 1/4″ and 8 1/2″ sections, complete the well and clean up. The approval also allows for contingent side-track options on one or both of the 12.25 inch and 8.5 inch sections, but not more than two of the sections in total.
The Ocean Endeavour was last cleared to drill the Tybalt side-track production well at Penguins in late 2021, with an extension to May 2022 owing to the rig needing to return to port for repairs.
© Supplied by Sevan SSPPenguins’ progress
All told, the Penguins redevelopment will see a total of eight wells drilled and tied back to a newbuild FPSO vessel, which is currently undergoing final preparation work at Aibel’s yard in Haugesund Norway, expected to last around five months.
However, its journey from China has not been smooth. While on board the Boskalis White Marlin transport vessel, the structure was occupied by Greenpeace protestors for 13 days prior to its arrival in Norway.
Among the six protestors on board was Imogen Michel, a Greenpeace activist from Ayrshire, Scotland, who spent over 290 hours aboard the vessel and travelled nearly 2,500 miles.
Though they later disembarked, the group’s Southeast Asia executive director Yeb Sano addressed Shell CEO Wael Sawan directly, saying the occupation was “just the beginning.”
Greenpeace said it had been hit with a legal claim for $120,000, over alleged damage caused by activists while onboard the FPSO.
Meanwhile, Subsea 7 has been undertaking engineering, procurement, construction and installation (EPCI) deal on the redevelopment, covering production flowlines, gas lift flowlines, control systems, riser systems, export pipelines and associated subsea tie-ins.
The group said work on the Penguins contract was 90% complete at the time of its Q3 2022 results last year.
Shell is on record as saying it expects the project to unlock 80 million barrels of oil that would have otherwise been left stranded.
Once fully operational, average peak production is expected to be approximately 45,000 boepd, according to Shell’s website.
Oil will be transported via tanker to refineries, and gas will be transported via the Far North Liquids and Associated Gas System (FLAGS) pipeline to the St Fergus gas terminal.
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