Statoil Halts Production on Visund
Norway’s Statoil on Wednesday experienced problems with a well on the Visund field offshore Norway prompting the company to shut the production down.
Visund is an oil and gas field in blocks 34/8 and 34/7, 22 kilometres north-east of the Gullfaks field in the Tampen area of the Norwegian North Sea.
In an e-mail to Offshore Energy Today, the spokesperson for the Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) said that Statoil experienced a well control incident at Visund yesterday after which the installation was shut down.
The spokesperson also said that some of the workforce has been flown off the installation.
“We are following the situation closely. The situation is not considered dramatic at this point,” the safety authority added.
On stream since 1999, the field is developed with a floating production, drilling and quarters platform.
The subsea-completed wells on the field are tied back to the floater with flexible risers. Oil is piped to Gullfaks for storage and export. The Visund field began producing gas and exporting it to continental Europe on October 7, 2005.
Statoil is the operator of the field with 53.2% interest, and its partners are Petoro, ConocoPhillips and Total E&P Norge with 30%, 9.1%, and 7.7% interest, respectively.
Offshore Energy Today reached out to Statoil seeking confirmation and further details on the well incident on the Visund field, but we are yet to receive the company’s response.
Elsewhere in the North Sea, Statoil decided to stop production from the Volve field after eight years due to low amounts of oil and gas in the reservoir making it unprofitable to drill new wells at current oil price.
