Norway's Minister of Trade and Industry Grete Knudsen today christened Hydro's Oseberg Sør oil and gas production platform in the North Sea in a ceremony attended by Hydro top management and 18 guest representatives from the government and partner companies.
Platform manager Knut Magne Halvorson wished everyone welcome prior to a formal presentation delivered by Hydro Oil and Energy chief Tore Torvund. After a tour of the platform, Knudsen officially christened the installation by unveiling an ornamental glass artwork.
About 160 official guests will celebrate the opening of Oseberg Sør at a special dinner arrangement in Bergen this evening. A festive dinner arrangement will also be held for offshore workers aboard the platform.
The Oseberg Sør field actually started producing on Feb. 5, 2000, from a well drilled from the nearby Oseberg Center installation. The platform received its first oil on deck on Aug. 29, 2000, ahead of schedule and within budgeted development time and cost projections.
The Oseberg Sør field consists of several structures south of the main Oseberg petroleum field and was developed with an integrated drilling, accomodation and production platform on a steel jacket at a sea depth of 100 meters. The platform is built to accomodate the drilling of 30 wells.
Four additional wells are planned from nearby Oseberg B. Of the field's scheduled plateau production rate of 115,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2001, some 20,000 bpd will be produced via the Oseberg Center (Omega Nord). The oil is piped through the Oseberg Transport System to the onshore Sture oil terminal.
The Oseberg Sør field has a total of 346 million barrels of recoverable oil and 16 billion cubic meters of recoverable gas.
Oseberg Sør is owned by operator Hydro (32.02 percent), the state's direct financial interest (38.36 percent), Statoil (18.22 percent), Conoco (7.7 percent), and ExxonMobil (3.7 percent).