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New Insights West of the Shetlands

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Friday, July 5, 2024

Video Presentation


West of Shetland Gas and Chasing the remaining giants on the UKCS
Colin Percival
Athena Exploration


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Talk Description

The North Sea Transition Authority estimate the UKCS yet to find is around 15 billion boe. Of this total 5.5 billion boe (37%) lies in the West of Shetland with a significant proportion expected to be gas. The 5.5 billion boe largely sits at the play level (4.7 billion boe) with only 0.8 billion boe in mapped prospects and leads. Good quality seismic and AVO analysis is required to convert the play level volumes into robust, low risk, drillable prospects. Evaluation of recently reprocessed seismic data indicates that large standalone low risk gas prospects exist, many in moderate water depth with modest target depth. Success at any one of these prospects would be sufficient for a new era of gas development West of Shetland. This would also unlock the significant gas discoveries in the area which are currently stranded due to their size.



Historically gas had negative value West of Shetland. Companies preferentially targeted oil, and any associated gas required disposal typically by reinjection. Output from oil fields such as Foinaven and Schiehallion (both Palaeocene) was initially constrained by the injection capacity of the gas disposal wells. This led to the development of the West of Shetland Pipeline System (WOSPS) to evacuate gas from these fields via Sullom Voe to Magnus where it was injected into the reservoir to enhance oil recovery. WOSPS did not provide an evacuation route for third party business until very recently when oil production and associated gas production from these fields had significantly declined. The first dedicated gas evacuation system was the Laggan-Tormore (Palaeocene) development tied back to the Shetland Gas Plant. Underperformance of these fields and the discovery of an oil leg in Tormore resulted in reduced throughput, and exploration close to the pipeline was undertaken to provide additional gas volumes. The Edradour (Cretaceous) and Glenlivet (Palaeocene) gas discoveries were subsequently tied in to provide additional gas volumes. Both gas evacuation systems now have ullage and a 2km pipeline to connect the two currently independent systems on Shetland is underway.



The availability of ullage in the existing gas infrastructure and the ability to develop West of Shetland gas from onshore with extremely low emissions < 5kg CO2e per boe herald a potential new era for this province. It has few of the issues that prevail in mature areas such as ageing infrastructure requiring electrification and competition for offshore space. It is the only UKCS basin that can deliver a significant number of large (>100mmboe) low risk prospects and provides a compelling resource for the UK during the energy transition.





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We are planning a further webinars program for 2024 -
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