Development plans submitted by Hydro to the Norwegian authorities for the Fram Vest og Vale oil and gas fields in the North Sea were approved by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy on Friday.
"The approval is an important milestone for the project. With the Fram Vest development, we can utilize existing infrastructure in the Troll area and sharpen profitability by exploiting comparatively small reserves,"said Lars Christian Alsvik in Hydro Exploration and Production.
The Fram Vest field, which is scheduled to start producing oil in October 2003, will have a plateau output rate surpassing 60,000 barrels per day. Investments in the project are about NOK 4 billion (USD 440 million). Fram Vest's recoverable reserves are estimated at some 100 million barrels of oil and 8 billion cubic meters of gas.
The field will be developed with two subsea templates with four wells each. The wellstream will be transported to the Troll C platform for processing.
Vale is a gas field with estimated recoverable reserves of 2.5 billion cubic meters gas and 21 million barrels of condensate. The field will be developed as a subsea satellite operation tied into the new Heimdal riser platform. The Vale field is planned to begin producing in June 2002, but Hydro is considering an earlier start up.
Investments in Vale are calculated at about NOK 880 million (USD 100 million), including modifications to the Heimdal unit (NOK 260 million, or USD 29 million), drilling, subsea templates and pipelines.