Wireline Issue 44 - Spring 2019

Apache North Sea operations and projects director, Mark Hobbs.

“The company understands the value of what the North Sea delivers and because of that, it wants to keep investing here in the future.”

under way on the multi-well subsea development and it is scheduled to be online by the end of the year. With plans to drill at least one exploration well in 2019 and several more in subsequent years, Jeff says it’s illustrative that the strategy is paying off. “Having three successful exploration wells already, over a four-year period, is pretty remarkable in the North Sea at the moment.” He says one of the key factors behind recent accomplishments is Apache’s decision to deliver via small teams empowered to “get after” projects. “Particularly on the geoscience side, we work as a single team across both development and exploration, and the learnings and knowledge we gain can be shared across the project environment.” With Garten specifically, he says pre-drill evaluation work gave the team confidence in its risking of the prospect. The fast-lane route to production, he adds, was also fuelled by several other key factors. Perhaps most notably, the exploration well was designed to be developed as a producer in the event of success. The surface location of the well lies also adjacent to a tie-in point on the pipeline linking the Apache-operated Buckland field to Beryl, streamlining the tie-in process. Mark adds that it was “a very happy coincidence” that the well and an intermediate tow- head from the Buckland bundle were in close proximity, which made it easier for them to capitalise on existing infrastructure. It also sat well with the team’s decision, made very early on, to tie Garten into the Buckland bundle if pressures allowed. Jeff also highlights the advantages of having a single integrated team working the project through from exploration to development. This was the concept of the small, empowered team model: it allowed for a seamless process through the project and did

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