More oil from Snorre A drilling facilities upgrade

The upgrade will make it possible to drill new wells from Snorre A in the period up to 2040.

“Well drilling and maintenance represent the most important activities we can undertake in order to recover more oil and gas from our fields. By upgrading the drilling facilities on Snorre A we reckon we can recover 67 million additional barrels of oil from the Snorre field,” says Bente Aleksandersen, head of Operations South in Development and Production Norway in Statoil.

With an oil price of USD 100 per barrel, that means oil worth roughly NOK 40 billion.

The main objective of the drilling facilities upgrade is to improve both the general environmental conditions as well as the safety of drilling operations on Snorre A. The work will start in March this year and will be completed in 2015.

 “We will in the future be seeing more and more of this type of modification in order to extend the lifetime of existing fields.  It is an attractive market for the supplier industry. Upgrading a platform that is already in use is demanding; it’s a task that sets tough requirements to the expertise and quality of deliveries. But we are certain that we, together with Aker Solutions, can better enable Snorre A to carry out its future operations by implementing this drilling upgrade project,” says Vidar Martin Birkeland, head of project procurement in  Statoil.

Several of the Statoil-operated fields will get an extended lifetime because the company will manage to increase the recovery of oil and gas and tie back new discoveries to already established field centres.

The upgrade of the drilling facilities is an important step towards extending the lifetime of several fields and thereby helping boost recovery. The Snorre A upgrade will help extend the field’s lifetime until 2040. There are also plans to upgrade the drilling facilities on the Gullfaks field, which will make a significant contribution to extending its lifespan.