The first Statoil operated satellite developments, Statfjord East and Statfjord North in the North Sea, can celebrate their 10th anniversary since coming on stream.
Together these two fields, which are tied back to the Statfjord C platform in the North Sea, produce some 62,000 barrels of oil per day (10,000 cubic metres). This represents roughly half the current output from Statfjord C.
"Statfjord East and North have provided us with valuable experience which we have used in later seabed developments," says Arne Sigve Nylund, operations vice president for Statfjord." Production from these fields is very important in terms of exploiting process capacity on Statfjord C."
The satellites are currently in the tail production phase, and the challenge will be to improve the recovery rate and maintain profitable production for as long as possible.
"If the Statfjord late life project is approved, we should be able to keep the satellites producing as long as the main field – that is, up to the end of 2018," says Mr Nylund. "Then we can aim for a recovery rate of almost 60 per cent, which is extremely high for a subsea development."
When production started, recoverable reserves were put at roughly 122 millioner barrels of oil (19.4 million cubic metres) for Statfjord East and 172 million barrels (27.4 million cubic metres) for Statfjord North. They were later upgraded to 224 and 248 million barrels respectively.
Each of the fields has been developed with three subsea templates, eight production wells and three wells for water injection. Statfjord East and North are separate partnerships, but operated together with the Statfjord field, with a joint operations organisation.