wintershall information · acceptance. mario mehren and marinus elen-baas being interviewed on sh-6...

ADIPEC OFFSHORE SPECIAL 2017

Stay on course in the North Sea

Full power for Maria

Accurate with mini-fossils

Premiere at sea for Shuwaihat

North Sea in distress?

Challenge Low prices, old fields: The situation in the North Sea is tricky. How Wintershall is aiming to

avoid a shipwreck.

INFORMATIONWINTERSHALL

2 WINTERSHALL INFORMATION A D I P E C O F F S H O R E S P E C I A L 2 0 1 7 A D I P E C O F F S H O R E S P E C I A L 2 0 1 7 WINTERSHALL INFORMATION 3

OIL & GASEDITORIAL

CONTENT

Production test Wintershall is drilling off the

coast of Abu Dhabi for the first time. Sour gas means that there are high safety requirements in the campaign. Wintershall is saving millions by using its own infrastructure.

Shuwaihat: Premiere at sea

RESULTS WILL BE AVAILABLE IN MID 2017, THEN A DECISION WILL BE TAKEN ON THE DEVELOPMENT CONCEPT

LOCATIONThe field is situated 250 kilometers from the city of Abu Dhabi.

PARTNERS Wintershall, AD-NOC and OMV are cooperating in assessing Shuwaihat. As the operator, Wintershall is responsible for technical explo-ration, which will comprise drilling up to three wells. The first onshore one was com-pleted in 2015.

PROJECT SHUWAIHAT

PORT OF MUGHARRAQ

Above Wintershall has set up its own infrastructure at the port.

Below High safety precautions are being taken on land.

PORT OF AL HAMRIYAH

Above The offshore well SH-6 is being

drilled with the Ensco-104 rig.

Below Pieter van der Hem (left)

and Marinus Elenbaas during

acceptance.

Mario Mehren and Marinus Elen-baas being interviewed on SH-6 –

watch at www.youtube.com/wintershall

ABU DHABI

Dubai

UAE

Ensco-104

field, and is expected to demonstrate the productivity of the reservoir. The results will be critical for the further development of the field.

The security precautions taken for the up to 120 people working on the drilling rig are extensive. Fixed and portable gas de-tection equipment and alarm systems have been added, and the air supply and respi-ratory protection systems meet the highest standards. Shuwaihat requires maximum attentiveness, because the sour gas being produced here contains 23 percent hydro-gen sulfide and 7 percent carbon dioxide. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is highly poisonous in concentrations of as little as 0.05 percent. Accordingly, areas have been blocked off around the drilling rig, and a standby ves-sel is always close at hand.

The technical requirements are equally challenging. The Nahr Umr and Laffan for-mations through which the drill bits must pass are often unstable. “We know this from our SH-5 well, where we lost the drill string in these formations. We were able to continue only after stabilizing the borehole with synthetic oil-based drilling mud,” says Marinus Elenbaas, the manager in charge of drilling operations. Experience from the onshore well has also shown that drilling vertically through these formations is the best option.

Wintershall is also trying out new solu-tions in terms of infrastructure for this project. To supply the drilling rig, the com-pany has expanded the little fishing port

F ollowing intense preparations, Wintershall has commenced drill-ing the first offshore well in Abu Dhabi – SH-6 will be about five

kilometers off the coast of the Shuwaihat Island in the Arabian Gulf. The company plans to test the sour gas well at a depth of approximately 5,000 meters early 2017. “This is an important step for our team,” says Piet van der Hem, general manager of the Shuwaihat project. SH-6 is the second well to appraise the Shuwaihat sour gas

of Mugharraq, which is located near the Shuwaihat field. It was necessary to con-struct concrete containment to support a facility for processing drilling mud that had been installed. Mugharraq is used not only to ship materials such as pipes and drilling fluid quickly and cost-effectively, but also to transport the crew members to the rig by

boat. “Limiting the use of helicopters and an extra supply vessel saves us $10 million,” says Elenbaas. “Many other companies have considered this, but we are actually doing it. The port of Mugharraq is ideally located to support offshore activities in the entire Western Region of Abu Dhabi,” adds van der Hem. “Because of having this land base we are less dependent on other companies. It also reduces our risk of downtime due to logistics.”

Dear readers, the demand for hydrocarbons in the U.A.E. has steadily risen in the last few years. As a result, Wintershall, Germany’s biggest international active oil and gas producer, has also been extending its involvement in the region since 2010. Together with ADNOC and OMV we have been exploring the Shuwaihat sour gas and condensate field since 2012. In July 2017, we were able to finish the second well (offshore). The results are currently being evaluated. But offshore we are active not only in Abu Dhabi. Wintershall has expertise in offshore production that has grown over decades: in Argentina and North Africa, but primarily in the North Sea. Our flagship

project ‘Maria’ in Norway is about to go into production. In this OFFSHORE SPECIAL we have compiled articles from 2016/2017 that were published in our employee magazine and present the development of selected

offshore projects offering a unique Wintershall viewpoint.

STEFAN LEUNIG HEAD OF MEDIA RELATIONS

Cover Story Research & TechnologyP. 04 NORTH SEALow prices and few finds: The countermeasures that Wintershall is now taking

P. 12 MARIAThe development concept: Howoil is to start flowing from 2018

P. 18 SHUWAIHAT WELLSensors and microfossils provide guidance

P. 02 SHUWAIHATFirst offshore well is toprovide answers

P. 10 NORWAYHere we go: Drilling startsat Maria

Oil & Gas

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PRINTED IN DECEMBER 2016

Meike Bruhns, Katrin Rausch

A really big find. “That’s what we all dream about,” says Anne Grethe Bretting. The geoscien-tist and her team search for oil

and gas fields off the Norwegian coast for Wintershall Norge (WINO). “Exploration in the North Sea has a future, of course,” she says. “Several discoveries have been made in recent years in the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. We’re now working to submit the documents for this year’s APA round.” These licens-es concern mature areas close to exist-ing infrastructure Awards in Predefined

Stay on course in the North Sea

Walking a tightrope The North Sea has been one of Europe’s key suppliers of oil and gas for almost 50 years. If the region wants a future, the industry needs to come up with something in the face of low prices, high production costs, and reserves that are running low.

Areas. “In order to make a discovery we first need to secure the acreage.” The geologists and geophysicians at WINO don’t want to become infected by the gloom and doom about prospects for the North Sea suggest-ed in analyses by the World Energy Council and in many newspaper reports.

Nevertheless, the importance of the North Sea – which has been one of Europe’s key suppliers of oil and gas since the Albroath oil field was discovered off Scotland in 1967 – will diminish in the medium to long term. The high price of oil formerly cushioned the traditionally high costs of production in the P

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region. Yet since it has fallen from around $110 a barrel in 2014 to its current level of $50, and the price of gas has dropped from around $8 per MMBtu* and settled at about $3, E&P companies face multiple major challenges. Production and investment costs need to be reduced further to continue making money. At the same time, the reserves in many fields are dwindling and the platforms involved have to be decommissioned at great cost and effort. And the search for new reservoirs is now leading companies far to the north and east – to frontier areas and often greater

water depths. “Alt-hough large finds are becoming in-creasingly rare,

they are still being made, especially off the coast

of Norway,” says Heiko Meyer, Vice Presi-dent Strategy and Portfolio Management at Wintershall. Experts believe that a total of some 20 to 30 billion barrels of oil equiva-lent (boe) lie untapped beneath the North Sea. Wintershall is mainly focusing its explo-ration efforts on the Utsira High region off the west coast of Norway, where Statoil

intends to start production from the enormous Johan Sverdrup oil field in 2019. Bretting and her colleagues suspect there are also further large reservoirs in the Vö-ring Basin in the Norwegian Sea and in the Barents Sea. However, the fields there are far offshore and a long way from any existing infrastructure.

Thus Wintershall, like many other E&P compa-nies, favors a combination of near-field exploration close to existing platforms and selected activities in

the Vöring Basing and Barents Sea for cost reasons. “If we don’t have to build things from scratch, that saves us easily hundreds of millions,” says Meyer. “That means even small finds might be profitable for us if they’re located close to fields that are already being developed. But if we have to create the infrastructure first, the new

reservoir really has to be very large for developing it to make economic sen-se.” And at least in the North Sea, those finds are becoming less and

SOME 20-30 BILLION BARRELS OF OIL

EQUIVALENT (BOE) LIE UNTAPPED BENEATH

THE NORTH SEA.

(Exploration: From the Latin “exploratio,” the precise examination of reservoirs of natural resources in the earth’s crust.) The properties of the under-ground are like a compass, which guides the geologists in their search.

POTENTIAL IN THE NORTH SEA: SIGHTS SET ON UTSIRA HIGH

BEACON OF HOPE The region off Stavanger is currently regarded as the prime address for successful exploration in

the North Sea. In addition to the major Johan Sverdrup crude oil reservoir, the Edvard Grieg and Ivar Aasen oil fields were also discovered there. Ivar Aasen (above) began production in December of 2016; Wintershall has a 6.5 percent stake in the field. Alongside Utsira High, Wintershall is focusing on regions that are close to its own assets. One example is Skarfjell: A subsea tieback will be used to link the field to the Statoil Gjøa platform, located at a distance of around 17 kilometers, in which Wintershall holds a 20 percent stake.

Every geoscientist dreams of making

a big find. But smaller discoveries

close to existing infrastructure

are also valuable for us.

ANNE GRETHE BRETTING Team Leader Exploration North Sea

Wintershall Norge (WINO)

* Million British Thermal Unit

COVER STORYCOVER STORY


PRINTED IN SEPTEMBER 2017

(Production: From the Latin “productio,” the extraction and processing of natural gas and crude oil.) The production start is similar to the throwing of an anchor because an oil or gas field usually pro-motes several decades.

“Yet low prices are also an opportunity for our industry,” says experienced offshore technology expert Ingrid Karstensen, who now works as a project advisor at Wintershall headquar-ters in Kassel. “The quest for ways to make production cheaper and more efficient unleashes a lot of creativity.”

For example, WINO uses a rig with two der-ricks in the Maria field. While one drills, the other is used to prepare the next section. “That’s

less likely. That is why WINO and other companies are gradually feeling their way northward and eastward: With every find that’s developed, the network of pipelines and rigs grows – as does the likelihood that new finds can be tapped there.

There is likewise a further exploration activity in the more southern North Sea, off the Dutch and English coasts, around already developed reservoirs – and with some successful results. In the vicinity of its 35 gas and eight oil fields, Wintershall Nordzee (WINZ) keeps finding smallish new sources, such as the Winchelsea and

Silimanite gas fields that were dis covered off the coast of England in 2016. In the shape of Rembrandt off the coast of the Netherlands, Wintershall could even record an oil find. But not every discovery can be developed. “Due to the low gas price, WINZ is barely making money at the moment,” says Hei-ko Meyer. “That is why bigger investments cannot be covered from current revenues alone.” WINZ is therefore strictly focusing on fields that can quickly be brought into production.

like a smoothly running assembly line,” explains Meyer. “Since the wells often account for around 50 percent of the costs of developing a field, there’s a huge savings potential.” The fact that the service industry has also reacted to low oil and gas prices and has had to reduce its charges is a help. “A rig now costs just $250,000 a day instead of $500,000,” is how Meyer puts it.

It’s important to look at all the processes and think in a solution-oriented way – and at all levels of the company, says Karstensen. That’s exactly what the team on Brage does. For instance, when five of the caissons that

house the sea- and fire-fighting water pumps had to be replaced due to corrosion and material fatigue, the engineers came up with a cheaper alternative. Instead of having the new pipes once again tailor-made in their entirety and welded individually, they used a new connection system. As a result, not only could the new parts be fitted into the existing brackets this year, but also attached piece by piece. That cut the total cost by around 80 percent, or some €21.5 million.

The Dutch colleagues have long been very inventive when it comes to making production as low-cost as possible. For

instance, since 2007 they have controlled around 20 of their platforms with just two employees from the center for Remote Controlled Operations (RCO) in Den Helder. There’s also the unmanned L6-B mini- platform. Thanks to its simple structure and short construction time of just nine months, it doesn’t even cost half as much as a customary satellite platform. That enables cost-effective production from small gas fields. All the same, the next big boom in the southern North Sea will be for decommissi-oning. Companies responsible for dismant-ling the facilities economically and in

Low oil and gas prices are also an

opportunity for our industry. The quest for cheaper and more efficient

solutions unleashes a lot of creativity.

INGRID KARSTENSEN Project Advisor

Global Development Support, Wintershall Holding (WIHO)

OPERATING COSTS PER BARREL HAVE FALLEN BY UP TO

40 PERCENT IN THE NORTH SEA.

COMMERCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY: WINZ RECYCLES OLD PLATFORMS

RESOURCEFULNESS ON BRAGE SAVES MONEY

MULTIPLE USE For years, the engineers at WINZ have been coming up with lots of ideas about how to save costs. For example, by reusing the old platforms, such as the multipurpose P6-S platform. It traveled 18 nautical miles to

the Q1-D field with its legs in the air (above). The E18-A wasn’t newly built either. It mostly comprises components from the old P14-A platform. “We had to take it out of service and decommission it anyhow, so we disassembled, reconditioned, and converted it on land. That way we were able to reuse most of the material and save a lot of time and money,” says Peter Valkenier, engineering and construction manager at WINZ.

EFFICIENCY The Norwegians are creative. The Brage team managed to cut annual operating costs by around €700,000

almost on its own. They commissioned the development of a tailor-made cleaning robot that removes traces of corrosion on the conductors with a jet of water, making the expensive and arduous process of sandblasting the pipes a thing of the past. The engine of the Energy Swan, the supply ship for Brage, was retrofitted for around €200,000 with what’s known as a soft star-ter, thus throttling it back. Although the ship is now slower, it uses half the amount of fuel, which saves around €500,000 a year.

50 PERCENT OF THE FIELDS off the coast of Norway and the United Kingdom make a profit if the price of crude is below $45.

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THERE ARE 300 OIL AND GAS FIELDS

with more than 5,000 wells in the North Sea.

HUSTLE & BUSTLE

Total North Sea production by hydrocarbon (thousand boe/day)

Source: UCube from Rystad Energy

GasNGLCondensateCrude oil

8,000

6,000

4,000

2,000

2005 2010 2015 20200



(Decommissio-ning: To officially take out of ope-ration). The complete dismantling of all offshore installations. In contrast to our picture, no toy cranes are used but real heavy equipment.


systems that are still used by smaller platformsafter larger ones have been closed down, but are no longer utilized to full capacity,” says Meyer. “They become uneconomic and have to be shut down at some point, too.” Key infrastructure could thus disappear in the coming years.

The challenge of decommissioning is bringing the 14 E&P companies in the Netherlands even closer together. “The Dutch state-owned company EBN is currently getting

an environmentally responsible manner, might profit from this. The World Energy Council puts the costs of completely decom-missioning the oil and gas industry’s inf-rastructure at around €80 to €100 billion. “It’s highly probable that we’ll see a two-pronged development in the North Sea in the coming years. One will mainly involve production and investment, and the other safe and low-cost dismantling of the old infrastructure,” says Paul de Leeuw, Head of the Oil and Gas Institute at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. Twenty-three platforms have already been

shut down and decommissioned in Dutch and British waters, 13 of them by WINZ. Five more have been closed down and await decommissioning. “We’re attempt-ing to seize the right moment when oil and gas prices are high enough,” says Peter Valkenier, Engineering and Construction Manager at WINZ. Decommissioning costs can thus be covered from revenues. Shutting down is delayed for as long as possible at all the plat-forms. “We have to take into account the pipeline

everyone around the table to create a joint master plan,” says Valkenier. “As a result, we hope to reduce costs by up to 35 percent.”

However, since the older platforms in particular are all unique models, it’s difficult to develop standar-dized workflows and processes. Plans to use old production facilities to store CO2 or connect them to offshore wind farms for storing or converting energy only play a minor role at present in the North Sea.

“We’ve already reused seven of our decommissioned plat-

forms,” says Valkenier. “We will do that more and more often in

the future.”That adds up to a lot of challenges for

Wintershall to tackle in the North Sea. But it’s also a region that still offers potential for new discoveries, cost reductions, and increases in production. Striking a balance between costs and income will doubtlessly be like walking a tightrope. But Wintershall should have learned how to do that in the past two years.

Decommissioning is unavoidable. Since all E&P

companies in the North Sea face the

same challenge, we’re currently creating a joint

master plan. PETER VALKENIER

Engineering & Construction Manager Wintershall Nordzee

(WINZ)

€80–€100 BILLION

is the cost estimated by the World Energy Council to decommission the oil and gas infrastructure in the North Sea.

DECOMMIS-SIONING IS EXPENSIVE

THOROUGH AND SAFE: DECOMMISSIONING OFF THE DUTCH COAST DECOMMISSIONING OFF THE

SHETLAND ISLANDSCOMPLEX Decommissiong mainly concerns companies in the Dutch and British North Sea. WINZ has already decommissioned 13 platforms. One of them is the K10-B, which produced gas for 33 years – from 1970 to 2003. In

2012, WINZ first abandoned the 11 production wells and sealed them with concrete. In 2014, the platform was disassembled into as large as possible parts and some 6,000 tons of steel were transported to the mainland for disposal. Among others, the shut-down platforms Kotter and Logger are currently waiting to be decommissioned.

EARLY Decommissioning is not yet a big topic for WINO. The only project so far is the removal of the Murchison oil

platform in the Scottish North Sea. The last section of the around 50,000-ton rig was brought on land at Vats in Norway in June – two years earlier than planned. After all the facilities were cleaned, the pipelines cut, and the 33 wells filled in after production ended in 2014, the platform was used in “lighthouse” mode – emitting light signals to warn and divert shipping. “We began planning the decommissioning as early as 2010 and documented every step. That means we can apply the lessons we learned in later projects,” says Jürgen Schuster, Asset Manager at WINO.

2050THE END IS NIGH says the World Energy Council. It forecasts that by 2050 the North Sea will no longer be dominated by oil and gas, but by instead wind farms.

THE NEXT BOOM IN THE NORTH

SEA WILL BE FOR DECOMMISSIONING

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Decommissioning costs per country and saved costs (in € billion)

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UK NO NL DK Baseline costs

Saved costs

Remaining costs

Source: UCube from Rystad Energy


OIL & GAS

The rig Deepsea Stavanger has been prepared

for drilling in the Maria field in the

port of Bergen.

Mark Lewis

Full power for Maria Norway Now it’s down to the nitty- gritty: The drilling campaign in the Maria field has begun. Wintershall is breaking new ground here: The water depth and weather conditions are one aspect – yet executing several steps simultaneously requires maximum precision.

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the produced oil and gas and processes it before it is exported via Åsgard C. Åsgard B provides the gas for the gas lifting, and Heidrun supplies treated water for water injection.

With long horizontal wells, which can stretch anything up to 7,000 meters from the well-head, and “subsea completions” to be carried out in the harsh conditions of the Norwegian Sea, Wintershall will be operating a drilling campaign unlike any it has led before. With the Deepsea Sta-

O n mighty yellow stilts, the Deepsea Stavanger rises up to the sky. In the port of Ber-gen, the drilling rig has been

prepared for its operation in the Norwe-gian Sea: the wells in the Maria field, Wintershall’s f lagship Norwegian deve-lopment. Over the course of 500 to 600 days, the rig will drill six wells in the seafloor, some 300 meters below the surface – four for production, two for water injection. The work got underway just recently.

The Maria field is being developed as a subsea tie-back, with the six wells connec-ted via templates and pipelines to three existing platforms nearby. Kristin receives

1 Drilling supervisor Frode Nygard from Wintershall will accompany the campaign.

2 A look inside the semi- submersible rig, which can be used in water up to 3,000 meters deep.

3 Trip up to the derrick. The Deepsea Stavanger has two of them.

vanger it has contracted one of the most sophisticated drilling rigs in the world.

The semi-submersible rig is a dual- derrick rig, meaning it has two drilling towers. “This means the operation can go much faster. While one operation is being carried out, we can already start prepa-ring the next step in parallel. But that also brings real challenges,” says Frode Nygard, Wintershall Norge’s Senior Drilling Super-visor on the rig.

As the dual activities run, the supply of equipment and materials must keep up to get the full efficiency improvement. “Coor-dination and decision-making will be more challenging. It is not enough to be one step ahead. You have to be three or four steps

BACKGROUNDThe recoverable reserves are put at around 180 million barrels of oil equivalent, most of it crude oil. Production is due to start in 2018. Wintershall is the operator and holds a 50 percent stake.

MARIA IN FIGURES

ahead,” says Nygard. The key dynamic will be ensuring close collaboration between Wintershall colleagues, staff from drilling contractor Odfjell Drilling, and drilling services contractor Halliburton. As part of Wintershall’s One Team strategy, all the key contractors are incentivized to drill as efficiently as possible – with financial gains for safe and efficient well operations.

To shape up for operation, more than 70 colleagues and main offshore drilling con-tractors attended an in depth “rig school” in Stavanger ahead of the drilling campaign. The three-day training class was run out of a simulator center that visualized the whole campaign. The full-scale simulator training, combined with theory and teamwork coa-

ching, is not yet the standard in the industry. But this campaign is uncommonly complex.

The Maria project’s other subsea con-struction work, including pipelaying, will have to take place simultaneously. Instead of anchoring the rig to the seabed with steel cables as would be normal, for some periods in the campaign the Deepsea Sta-vanger will be positioned via satellites. This “dynamic positioning system” uses the rig’s propellers to keep the facility in position, dispensing with the cables that could otherwise interfere with the ne-arby boats and installation work. This is the first time that Wintershall Norge has operated a rig with a dynamic positio-ning system.

“One of the things that makes this project so exciting and challenging is that we have a narrow window to complete our work. Simultaneous operations and short weather windows in this part of the world mean that our drilling operation needs to be carried out with military precision. We have done everything we can to be prepa-red,” said Hugo Dijkgraaf, Wintershall’s Ma-ria Project Director.

FOUR WELLS ARE FOR PRODUCTION, TWO FOR INJECTING WATER

2 3

1

You can find a film about the installation of the templates on the

seabed, and regular project updates at wintershall.no/maria


PRINTED IN MARCH 2017

RESEARCH & TECHNOLOGY

Mark Lewis

T he vast crane slowly lowers the huge yellow subsea template into the choppy Norwegian Sea. Set down on the seabed only a few

kilometers from an identical structure some 300 meters below the surface, the most visible symbols of the Maria development, the flagship project of Wintershall Norge (WINO), have disappeared beneath the oce-an surface.

Five production platforms, all of them visible from the installation vessel Normand Oceanic, are standing proudly on the horizon. The Maria field will tie in to three of these platforms via underwater pipe-lines. Passing ships won’t even know they are there.

The rationale for Wintershall is clear. “By building links on the sea bed to existing infrastructure, we create syn-

A winning combination Development It’s a key step for the Maria project: The production templates have been installed on the seabed. Development of the field is complex and technically challenging. However, a clever concept has been chosen – especially in tough economic times.

ergies and save costs,” says member of Wintershall’s Board of Executive Directors Martin Bachmann. “Maria is an example of a smart solution. It demonstrates how to realize projects successfully even in adverse circumstances.” The upfront cost is roughly half what a standalone floating platform would have cost.

Yet at approximately €1.6 billi-on, the Maria project still ranks as one of the most expensive projects ever undertaken by Wintershall. Bach-mann is clear that smart engineering is not enough – especially when the market is so depressed. “We have to deliver. Delays and cost overruns are not acceptable. They can make or break a project,” he says.

The pressure is on the project team to make a success of Wintershall’s first ma-jor Norwegian development. The Maria team must achieve this in an expensive oil producing region where cost overruns have become depressingly common.

Subsea tie-ins are relatively common in Norway. The templates act like underwa-ter mini-platforms producing oil and gas from the reservoir and sending it back to existing platforms to be processed and ex-ported from there.

Hugo Dijkgraaf, Wintershall’s Maria Project Director, says that a tie-in is nor-mally relatively straightforward. “In this way, creating a subsea development was a way of de-risking the project,” he says.

But Maria is no ordinary tie-in. “It is true that by utilizing existing services P

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QUANTITYThe recoverable reserves from the field are put at around 180 million barrels of oil equivalent.

PARTNERS Wintershall is the operating manager with a stake of 50 percent, Petoro holds 30 percent and Centrica Re-sources (Norge) 20 percent.

MARIA IN FIGURES

Top: The enormous yellow templates are lifted onto the transport ship Normand Oceanic in May of 2016. Oil is to be produced from them starting in 2018.

Left: Down they go: The templates on their way to the seabed.

Right: Wintershall Board member Martin Bachmann (left) watches the templates being loaded on board in Kristiansund.



HOST PLATFORM KRISTINThe floating platform (semi-submersible) islocated 23 kilometers from the Maria field.Here, the incoming oil and gas from Maria is metered, separated and processed. Kristin also operates the Maria templates via a control umbilical.

HOST PLATFORM ÅSGARD BThe semi-submersible platform provides Maria with gas for gas lift, which is used to improve oil production.

HOST PLATFORM HEIDRUNThe tension leg platform delivers the water injection Maria needs to maintain pressure in the reservoir. A new riser has been installed and the injection system will be upgraded with a new water treatment module.

TYRIHANSThe Statoil-operated oil and gas field already receives gas for gas lift from Åsgard B. Maria takes advantage of this: A Pipeline End Manifold (PLEM) ties back the Wintershall field to the Tyrihans subsea installation. That way an efficient well flow is secured.

MARIA TEMPLATETwo subsea templates have beeninstalled. Each of them will includethree wells: two production wellsand one water injection well. Theoil that is recovered from the four production wells will be gathered in a manifold before being piped to Kristin.

Red line The production flowline carries the produced mixture of oil, gas and water to Kristin.

Blue line The water for water injection is piped from Heidrun to Maria. The pipeline is 43 kilometers long.

Green line The gas for Maria well gas lift flows through a 20-kilometer pipeline from Tyrihans to the Maria template.

ÅSGARD CThe FSU (Floating Storage Unit) vessel Åsgard C receives the oil from Maria via Kristin. From here, oil tankers take it to the shore.

RESEARCH & TECHNOLOGYRESEARCH & TECHNOLOGY

and hosts, we have had a dramatically re-duced requirement to build topside equip-ment, but below the surface, it is a lot more complicated,” says Dennis Dickhausen, who as subsea manager is responsible for the templates and pipelines.

As well as requiring a platform to deal with the processing of the oil and gas,

os, it soon became clear that weight and space restrictions meant that this would not be possible.

This is why Maria will be connected to three different Statoil-operated platforms. Kristin receives the produced oil and gas, processes it and passes it on. Asgard B pro-vides gas for the gas lift procedure, Hei-drun supplies water for the water injection.

“The templates are like the center of a spider’s web because our pipelines and umbilicals go in all directions from the-re. We go northeast, southeast and nor-thwest,” says Dickhausen. Already some thousands of tonnes of rock have been laid

FAVORABLE CONTRACTS SAVED THE TEAM SEVERAL HUNDRED MILLION EUROS.

on the ocean floor to level the seabed for the 94 kilometers of pipelines which tie the templates back to their host facilities.

The project is the most technically ambitious tie-back in Norway. But through insisting on standard, field-tested com-ponents wherever possible, the experts at Wintershall Norge have been able to

minimize the threat of cost overruns. Me-anwhile, smart procurement has saved money.

The WINO procurement managers se-cured major savings by delaying the pro-curement of major contracts once the price of oil began to dive in 2014. This applied to the contracts to build the templates, fa-bricate and lay the pipelines, and hire a mobile rig to drill the field’s wells starting next year. These three contracts alone sa-ved hundreds of millions of euros.

By procuring the pipeline and tem-plate contracts from companies inside Norway, the people in charge have been G

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able to integrate their own project team into the contractor organizations – miti-gating risks through closer cooperation. The templates were built in Tønsberg on Norway’s southeast coast through Norwe-gian company FMC Technologies. Subsea 7 installed the templates, and is in the pro-cess of laying the pipelines. The next phase of the project has begun in March, when the Deepsea Stavanger rig began drilling the four production wells and two water injection wells.

In the meantime, Statoil has been pre-paring the platforms for hook-up to the pipelines. As the operator of all the

Maria: How oil and gas will be produced in future

the reservoir requires water injection to maintain pressure, while the producing wells need lift gas to bring the oil and gas from the reservoir to the surface. The ideal solution would be to take all of the services – processing, water injection and lift gas – from a single platform, but despite simulating a number of scenari-

TIMETABLE

DG1*2011

Discovery of Maria2010

DG22013

DG3 2015

Start of production 2018

IDENTIFY SELECT DEFINE EXECUTE

Evaluation of the host platforms

Setup of the organization and staffing

Appraisal well

Invitations to tender and award of contracts

Modification of the host platforms

Installation of the templates, laying of the pipelines

Front end engineering & design (FEED): Fleshing out

the selected concept

Studies on selection of the development concept

and on necessary modifications to the

host platforms

Drilling and completion of the development wells

* DG = Decision Gate = decision on whether the project proceeds to the next phase

14 WINTERSHALL INFORMATION A D I P E C O F F S H O R E S P E C I A L 2 0 1 7 WINTERSHALL INFORMATION 15

NORWEGIAN SEA

NORTH SEA

BALTIC SEANORWAY

ÅsgardMariaTyrihansKristin

Maria

Stavanger

Bergen

Heidrun

TrondheimKristiansund

200 km

Trondheim

You can find this and other films on Wintershall’s YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/wintershall

FILM Some 285 tonnes of steel had to be transported by the ship Normand Oceanic when it car-ried the Maria templates from Kristiansund in Norway to their destination in the Norwegian Sea more than 200 kilometers away. Wintershall shot a film lasting almost one-and-a-half minutes about this journey and the installation of the templates on the seabed. High tech underwater – that seems to be a big hit: The film reached more than 86,000 users on Facebook – the absolute record in the company’s history on social media! You can now find the film and everything about the Maria project on the separate Maria website at www.wintershall.no/maria.

Maria has many fans


toil and part of my job is to ensure that this also continues into the future,” says Malmanger.

In the six years since the field was disco-vered, the project team has had to shift and mutate, flexing the expertise in the Maria department to fit the needs of each phase of the development. Already the team develo-ping Norway’s Skarfjell discovery is benefi-ting from sharing the time and expertise of the Maria personnel. But everyone inside the project is clear that knowledge transfer must continue both inside the Norwegian OPCO and throughout the rest of the Win-tershall family.

“One of the cool things about this project is that we have done it all from discovery,” says Dickhausen. “It is not just building pipelines and templates. We needed to build from scratch the way that we run these projects. We needed to build our management system, our relation-ships with the Norwegian authorities, the The Maria tie-back concept seems really

complex. Does this make Maria a risky project?It is true that is quite complex. But overall it is not a different degree of complexity compared with more conventional development concepts. If you look around the world, you can see many delays and cost overruns in the construction of oil and gas facilities. We have been very careful to insist on standard components. And we have the technical and commercial creativity to take risks out of project wherever possible.

host facilities, the company is responsib-le, among other things, for installing the risers through which the oil and gas flow from Maria to Kristin.

“Good cooperation and trust to-wards Statoil is key for project success,” says Nicolas Pringault, Topside Manager responsible for the modifications that are being carried out by Statoil on the host installations. “Both companies benefit from the subsea concept. It is a win for us because we are saving costs. It is a win for Statoil because we are helping to extend the economic life of their platforms.”

The cooperation with Statoil will last well beyond the end of the construction phase. Though Wintershall is operator, day-to-day field operation will be handled by Statoil. “This is also a challenge,” says Eva Malmanger, Wintershall’s Manager

Operations for Maria, as she looks for-ward to 2018 when the field is due to begin producing. Wintershall’s single point of contact for operation will be Statoil’s Stjørdal office near Trondheim. This is the office that manages the Kristin plat-form – the host that both controls the Ma-ria wells and receives the hydrocarbons that flow from the reservoir. From there, Statoil also coordinates water injection from Heidrun and the lift gas that travels from Åsgard B to Maria via Tyrihans. “We have an excellent relationship with Sta-

They are soon entering the home straight (left to right): Topside Manager Nicolas Pringault, Operations Manager Eva Malmanger and Subsurface Manager Dennis Dickhausen. P

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“The low price of oil also has some advantages”

P roject leader Hugo Dijkgraaf and his team are looking back on some exiting years, and have already achieved a lot. But there is no time to relax yet.

Hugo, you and your team have already had to overcome a lot of challenges. What have been the biggest so far? The biggest challenge was finding the optimum development concept for the field and then bringing that idea from the drawing board into the nuts and bolts of the real world. One reason is that Maria is a unique concept; the other one is that this is the first major development for Wintershall Norge.

Is Maria a smart investment, given an oil price of $40–$50? The basic answer is yes. But a more elegant re-sponse would be to explain that the Maria field will produce for about 25 years. In this respect, the current oil price is not of the highest concern. On the contrary, the current low oil price envi-ronment has allowed us to procure contracts – in-cluding very large subsea and rig contracts – at prices that would not have been achievable a few years ago.

How can Maria contribute to cost saving?The very nature of the concept means that we have saved almost half of the CAPEX compared with a stand-alone development. Maria is thus extremely well suited to the current market environment. We are also trying to optimize the project as we go along. But the real key factor is project execution. We have very competitive contracts and we are obsessive about executing them flawlessly.

UNITThe Maria team has formed its own department since 2015. It’s called Project Maria Field Development, and currently has around 75 employees, co-vering fields such as subsurface, HSE, drilling, marketing and finance.

PROJECT STRUCTURE

The Maria field is located around 200 kilometers off Trondheim.

contractors and our partners. Most of all we had to build a team from scratch. We have all grown together and learned a lot. It is critical that we continue to learn and share our knowledge.”

“Maria is a smart investment. Due to the current low oil price, we were able to procure the contracts for technical facilities at very good prices.”

STATOIL COORDINATES ALL SERVICES FROM A SINGLE PLATFORM. Mark Lewis is a British journalist

working in communications for Wintershall Norge. He has written for national newspapers in the US and the UK, such as The New York Times and The Guardian.


01010101

Second sensorThe sensor induces an electrical current and measures resistance.

Data transfer The sensor data is trans-ferred as sonic impulses through the drilling fluid to the platform.

Cuttingsfrom the drilled layer are washed upward with the drilling fluid.

First sensorMeasures natural radioactivity.

Sonic impulses in drilling fluid.

Drill head

Drilling fluid

Upper layerDense limesto-ne, few dolomite crystals and no microfossils.

ReservoirPorous dolomitic limestone.

Lower layerDense limestone with a lot of microfossils.

In addition to geosteering, the biosteering method was used as a backup. With this method, small pieces of rock are flushed to the surface with the drilling fluid and analyzed on the platform. The different composition of the rock layers enables experts to identify the layer cur-rently being drilled. If the composition does not match the target layer, corrections to drilling are needed.

BiosteeringThe geosteering method was mainly used for the SH-6 well. With this method, two sensors are situated near the drill head and transmit important information on the rock layer by means of sound waves conveyed in the drilling fluid. The first sensor measures natural radio-activity and the second natural resistance in the rock. By comparing the data with that from the drilling of other wells, it is possible to determine whether the target layer has been reached or not.

Geosteering


E verything done right: The project team from Wintershall Middle East (WIME) has successfully drilled the first offshore well SH-6 in the

Shuwaihat sour gas field. And what’s more, they not only kept within the time and cost budget, but even undercut it.

The search for condensate and sour gas in the Shuwaihat field is tricky. After drilling a vertical pilot well, an additional horizontal section was to be drilled within the reservoir. The reservoir is located at a depth of around 3,000 meters and is just 2–3 meters thick. Hit-ting the reservoir demands the utmost precis-ion. As the operator, Wintershall is responsib-le for the success and wants to prove itself to its local partner ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company). Accordingly, the drilling team worked conscientiously on the rig off the coast of Shuwaihat. Having reached a depth of about 2,000 meters, the drilling team began sidetra-cking an additional borehole from the existing vertical well in order to drill horizontally over a distance of 1,000 meters. The drill bit battled through 10–15 meters an hour.

Sensors on the drill provided orientation below the surface. They send data on the rock layers that have just been drilled in the form of sonic impulses with the drilling mud to the surface and reveal the position of the drill bit. This method is called geosteering.

Dirk Radies, Subsurface Manager at Wintershall Middle East, says, “The rock lay-ers above and below our reservoir, composed of dense limestone, look very similar to the geosteering sensors. That means we also used what’s known as biosteering in the critical phase.” Every 20 minutes the team prepared a sample of the rock cuttings from the drilling

Anna Lutz and David Hecker

Accurate with mini-fossilsShuwaihat Wintershall has completed the first offshore well SH-6 sooner as expected. For the first time, geosteering and biosteering were used simultaneously to hit the narrow rock layer exactly.

PARTNERSWintershall ope-ned the office in Abu Dhabi with 11 employees in 2010. An agree-ment was signed between the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), Win-tershall and OMV for the technical assessment of the Shuwaihat sour gas and condensate field. As operator, Win-tershall will, in an equal partner-ship with OMV, carry out an assessment of the field, compri-sing up to three appraisal wells and 3-D seismic measurements.

BACKGROUND ON SHUWAIHAT

mud and examined it under the microscope to define the components. The experts could thus tell whether or not the drill bit was in the target zone. “We know from preliminary studies that the limestones above contain practically no microfossils, while those below contain them in great abundance,” says Radies. In their examinations the biosteering experts then found small pieces of rock with lots of dolomite crystals and a rock porosity of more than 5 percent. “We were therefore certain that we were drilling in the target zone. If we had found microfossils, we would have drilled too far and would have had to correct the course immediately to avoid extra costs,” says Radies.

The drilling work was successfully comple-ted in record time after around six months. “We prepared meticulously and tried to take every contingency into account,” says Piet van der Hem, General Manager of Shuwaihat. “Every detail was checked. For example, the quality control we used for our service pro-viders was particularly thorough in order to minimize sources of failures.”

Wintershall as the operator delivered in record time. The results are now being analyzed. The partners ADNOC, Wintershall and OMV will then decide how the develop-ment of the field should progress.

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Geosteering The data is monitored round the clock by geologists in close dialogue with biosteering experts. Decisions are put into action directly together with the drilling team.

Geosteering Center Geologists and geosteering experts also monitor all incoming data here round the clock and thus can quickly take decisions on what corrections need to be made. Communication with colleagues on the platform is conducted by e-mail.

Biosteering Cuttings are examined about every 20 minutes during drilling to identify the type of rock, compo-sition and microfossils. If the rock does not match the target layer, the drill string is realigned and its course corrected.

On the platform In Abu Dhabi

Sonic impulses Are decoded and, if necessary, disturbances and background noise are removed.

Cuttings Sonic impulses

Drilling depth: 3,048 m

Height of the target layer: 2 – 3 m

Eiffel Tower: 324 m

10 MILLIONEUROS were saved solely by expanding the infrastructure at the port of Mugharraq. As a result, transport routes to the rig were reduced and replacement teams could be carried by ship instead of helicopter.

197DAYS were needed to drill Shuwaihat 6; 252 were originally planned. Good preparation, the supply port and short transport routes sped up work. And all that was achieved under strict safety requirements.

5KILOMETERS: The distance bet-ween the rig and the mainland. A comprehensive safety concept was needed to protect workers and residents. Stationary and mobile detection and alarm sys-tems were installed for emergen-cies, and would have immediately identified escaping sour gas. The hydrogen sulfide in sour gas is highly toxic at a concentration of only around 0.05 percent.

Facts about the SH-6 well



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Publisher Wintershall Holding GmbH, Michael Sasse (responsible according to German press law)

Editorial address

Friedrich-Ebert-Str. 160 34119 Kassel, Germany Phone +49 561/301-3301 Fax +49 561/[email protected]

Editorial team Internal Communications Stephanie Raddatz (rad) Editor-in-Chief Katrin Rausch (rau) Editorial staff David Hecker (dh), Meike Bruhns, Anna Lutz (alu), Mark Lewis

Layout, photo editing & production C3 Creative Code and Content GmbH, Berlin

Printing Corporate Media, print run: 300 English (for ADIPEC)

wintershall information · acceptance. mario mehren and marinus elen-baas being interviewed on sh-6...

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