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Roll Royce Avon engines have also been in use for some time for gas compression. Another parallel with aviation.
I was visiting Killingholme ( Lincs) Gas Plant in the mid70's. The gas station there was receiving gas from the N Sea, compressing, and placing in the National Grid. There was a huge bank of compressors. It had a large flare stack, to flare, in the event of an emergency. One such emergency did occur during my visit, and I was less than 20mtrs from the flare stack, when the 'alarm' siren was activated, and a low rumble emanated from the stack, I turned and looked, and it was beginning to 'rotate', with a noise similar to a jet engine. The flare was alight with a flame some 20mtr long ( a swag), and the final noise was def. akin to a Vulcan bomber, which I knew well ,since I was an avid visitor , since a boy, to all Air Shows.
btw. looks v promising with HUR. lol. Good luck all concerned.
Cheers adoubleuk, news will be out soon, quietly confident.
Slip wouldn’t be surprised if it went flat to comments of ‘connectivity was priced in already’
LOL
Hide the knives and get out the straight jackets .....
schuttts - Will do. Excellent advice.
I expect we'll get an RNS on Monday or Tuesday, whichever way it goes I suggest buying a crash helmet over the weekend.
Regardless of when the RNS arrives, I think if we have confirmation of connectivity between Lincoln and Warwick, it should do the SP the world of good.
Has to be a FPSO designed to take the type of weather found West of Shetland.
Anybody know of any used, vgc, FPSO's docked and ready to go?
Beerbull,
"Sorry to put you on the spot, but from the flare pictures are you feeling confident WW will be another producer? & assuming it is how & when do you see HUR getting it into production? "
Assuming the photos of the flare are genuine, and I believe they are, WW is definitely 'go'. As such it'll be left 'suspended' for eventual tieback as a producer for whatever production facility Hurricane / Spirit install over the GWA. Company documentation suggests this'll be another FPSO.
WHEN this'll happen, I don't know.
Adoubleuk, great knowledgable posts & enjoyable read. Sorry to put you on the spot, but from the flare pictures are you feeling confident WW will be another producer? & assuming it is how & when do you see HUR getting it into production? Cheers
Adoubleuk
Thanks for reply to my question "I wonder if it sounds like 4 jet engines ?"
I too was in Libya (back in the 60's) as an Air Radar technician in the R.A.F and got to hear lots of 4 engine jets … but there's nothing quite like the sound of an Avro Vulcan bomber taking off.
Lady Sonia,
"I did wonder if a semi-submersible rig could be designed to store oil - guess the ballast/pontoons would not work with oil in them."
The answer is a definite no.
A semisub like the TOL is just a 'floating platform' to support the drilling rig and associated activities. Just the marine equivalent of an onshore 'pad' which a drilling rig might be installed on. But obviously far more complicated, due to the fact that it's 'marine'. But just like its onshore equivalent, it has 'deck space'. For what's going on right now, that 'deck space' is taken up with the DST 'test spread', receiving oil from the well, data-gathering, and then spitting the stuff out and burning it via the flare.
But this is where offshore and offshore differ. You can flare off 10,000 bbl/ day offshore no probs, and without any damage to the environment other than maybe frying any seagul stupid enough to fly that close. But you can't flare even 100 bbl of OIL per day onshore anwhere close to human habitation (like in the UK) without it causing a ruckus, and quite rightly so. So instead, in the onshore UK case, you have to build up storage facilities, and take the stuff in trucks to a refinery instead. Which might bring in some money, for sure, but might only just cover the costs of gathering the data, if that.
Offshore, or in the desert, or in other remote places, you just burn the stuff off. To gather the data. Because if the well's any good, it doesn't matter if 60,000 bbl has gone up in smoke. If you've found a few million bbl that you can produce and sell to the market.
The drilling rig is just the rig. And a place on which to plonk (temporarily) the well-test stuff.
ADuk ... I'm still not sure that you are with me.... The ref to the blessed JC and the gondola ride...was a hint to your comment on the flooding in Venice .... .A bit cryptic, so apologies, in my mind it wasn't, the aim was not to just amuse myself, honest.
Blazing saddles is hilarious... .also The Producers ; Gene Wilder/Mel Brooks comic genius
adoubleuk
Many thanks for your input and knowledge, better than reading a lot of rubbish from others as I have limited know how of the O and G industry but am very heavily invested in a few oilys
AD,
Thanks for the technical explanation re Gas/Oil from the rig.
I find that a lot more interesting than hearing other posters bang on about Macro/Environmental BS...
I did wonder if a semi-submersible rig could be designed to store oil - guess the ballast/pontoons would not work with oil in them.
Aduk,
TOL has a test separator I presume, though not v large!
bartlebobton,
"AdUK .... I was hoping Judith Chalmers had taken you on a gondola ride.... (ketchup)"
You're really pushing this personal stuff a bit, aren't you? But no, I have not been contacted by Ms Chalmers.
Though if I wanted a 'ghostwriter', or just a simple interview, I'd like it to be by Christine Ananpour, though she'd better have lots of memory in her recording-device. She was present in the audience at the Cream Reunion concert at the Albert hall in 2005, so I think we have something in common. But I don't think Judith Calmers was.
ADUK: simpler terms try Fosters lager !
TheGuardian,
"According to the link, TL does have a small oil capacity."
Yes. BUT NOT FOR OIL PRODUCED FROM A WELL UNDER TEST.
Doh. I give up. Think I'll just go and hide myself under a flat rock.
Or no, I'll go login for my online poker tournament. There are some right imbeciles to be found there (including myself), but none so ignorant as to think that the Transocean Leader semisub drilling rig somehow acts as a part-time storage unit for oil produced during a DST.
Just one more time, slowly. What you see in the pictures of that flare is oil, gas, pigs on the wing and whatever is coming out of the well, going up in flames, serving no purpose other than to gather data about the field's viability.
You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.
AdUK .... I was hoping Judith Chalmers had taken you on a gondola ride.... (ketchup)
ADUK, I think you'd do well to write a memoir! According to the FT gritty ones are the hot publishing trend. Obviously oil rigs are less in vogue than the NHS or the legal system but still I'd read it and I'm sure many others would...otherwise these experiences will day be lost as the days of oil are gone and only robots are left to run and minimal drilling required in the world.
SotB,
"It’s an oil well. Where’s the gas coming from
—————————————
Below the sea !"
I used to have some respect for you, but it's going to rapidly wane if you carry on with stupid posts like that, similar to the one which Wellwell posted. Things like that just confuse the 'laypeople', whereas those of us communicating on a BB like this and actually DO have technical oilfield knowledge should try to share it in an educational way, not to obfuscate and throw up smoke and mirrors. Because bydoing the latter just makes people even more suspicious of our industry, and thinking we've something to hide.
The plain and simple answer to these peoples' question is that gas, even in an 'oilwell', is held 'in solution' in the oil itself, when under a certain pressure. Ie when it's all kept underground. As the oil rises to the surface, and thus under less pressure, the gas fraction comes out of solution and takes its 'gaseous' form, expanding as such. The liquid fractions of the crude (which remain liquid at atmospheric pressure) can be stored and transported to market. But the gas cannot, due to the volume it takes up, unless there is a gas pipeline, or otherwise it's compressed. Neither of which are 'our case', but which is why a tie-in to WASP is required, to 'export' the gas which increased oil production will generate. Meanwhile, it has to be flared. Because methane and the others are 'greenhouse gasses', which shouldn't just be released to the atmosphere without dire consequenses resulting.
Yes, sometimes one (if one is a thinking person) can stand within a comfortable distance of an oilwell flare, and wonder wistfully about all that energy going to waste. How many homes could it heat if alternative infrastructure were in place? Etc. But this ain't a perfect world.
This is basic 'O level' physics stuff.
But I doubt if Corbyn ever passed that, and Greta Thumbsuck skipped school to avoid it.
Bloobird,
Replying to you, here, because others who ought to know better have responded with silly comments. Follows, an adoubleuk anecdote, anyone fed up with adoubleuk anecdotes please skip this post.
"I wonder if it sounds like 4 jet engines ?"
Accoustically, no. But in general effect, yes.
I think the most impressive DST I was involved with was 2003 in Libya, an exploration well 20km east of an already very productive field. And we hit 'pay' bigtime. A funny thing about that which I remember well was that I'd chosen the bit from a vast 'bitstore' in a 40ft container, because it was an orphan. A freebie from a fledgeling outfit called UKBits, and it looked like a truncated rugby ball. And boy, did it work!
Anyway, we knew the well was a winner, and proceeded to DST. And Wintershall (the operator I was consulting for) decided to do a 'green' DST, and got in an offshore-style 'clean burn' flareboom, so it wouldn't be smokey. First time anyone had been so pernickety in that country. Usually the DST setup is just 300 yards of 5" drillpipe laid downstream from the test-spread to the flarepit, and the heck with the smoke. Whereas we not only had to lay the Dp, but also a waterline alongside to feed to the 'offshore-style' burner, so the water (under pressure) would vaporise with the heat, combine with unburnt carbon, and thus produce no smoke.
Complicated.
Anyway, the well was a whopper.
The line from the test spread to the burner was (as usual) 5" Dp, slightly trenched, but nevertheless pinned in place by laying the rig's drillcollars across to stop any movement, or at least damp it. 'Drillcollars' are heavy tubulars, weighing a few tons apiece.
My wellsite office / sleeper was 100 yards from the rig itself. The test spread just in front of the rig, and the line to the flare heading off in the other direction. So essentially, my bed (when I found the time to sleep, or was inclined to do so) was 400 yards from the flare itself. And my 'sleeper' was heavily soundproofed: Wintershall didn't cut corners on such things.
'Running the show' (other than the crews) were just three people: the company's head petrophysicist, myself, and the test Supervisor. A nice tight show.
Under test, we never went to 'full open' (one inch!) choke, but decided 3/4" was enough, with the well running at 8500 bbl/day. Because it wasn't the noise, but the ground shaking which worried us. And the possibility of the flare-line (despite the DC's holding it down getting loose and whipping around like an out-of control garden hose. And we didn't want things like the derrick-lights getting rattled-loose and breaking on the rig.
Google 'Nafoora oilfield'. A major FB producer. Ours was Nafoora West.
Happy days.