Wireline Issue 46 - Autumn 2019

and Hereema, Claus highlights close, collaborative relationships with suppliers including Wood Group, Semco Maritime, Bilfinger, Baker Hughes, Emerson, Siemens, Bel Valves and others. All told, around 52% of the project value has been delivered from the UK supply chain, in addition to the 200 permanent jobs required for ongoing management of the field itself. The collaboration extends to government and to regulators. In particular, Culzean benefited from strategic support from the OGA and HM Treasury in the form of the HPHT Cluster Allowance, a tax benefit designed to enable the development of these costlier and more technically challenging fields. “I think it’s fair to say that around project sanction and FID the UK policies and regime put in place were quite helpful and basically part of the make-or-break for it going ahead, so it definitely played a significant role in that respect,” Claus adds. Beyond that, he says that the OGA has maintained a close interest in the project, particularly as it looks ahead to future exploration and production opportunities around the infrastructure. Other highly specialised components necessitated international co-operation, particularly when it came

to the high-grade steel needed for well cases and linings in order to cope with the highly saline and corrosive environments found in the HPHT reservoir. For these, Maersk reached out to Sumitomo in Japan. The next generation of HPHT With Culzean up and running, Total is now moving to a new operational blueprint, described as a “one-asset model.” This involves the combination of Culzean with nearby Elgin-Franklin — also an HPHT field — to create a single Central North Sea (CNS) asset. Current plans are to have this completed by October 2019, effectively creating one operation with total combined production of 230,000 boepd. Claus says that Total has always planned to develop a North Sea ultra-HPHT hub, and the combination of Elgin-Franklin and Culzean represented a good fit for the existing portfolio: “First and foremost [the hub] is about knowledge-sharing and optimising processes. The longstanding expertise within HPHT in Total is a great thing for both assets.” Looking at the two assets in tandem, the potential efficiencies were clear: “Some of the obvious candidates will be in logistics — the two fields are located only 15 miles from each other,

Image above: 2018 saw the installation of topsides at the field.

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