(Company corrects production start to Q4 2016 from early 2017)
LONDON, April 29 (Reuters) - BP said on Wednesday itstarted a seven-year deep water drilling campaign in the Loyalfield in the UK North Sea as part of a $3 billion drive todevelop the ageing oil and gas basin.
The redevelopment of the Loyal and adjacent Schiehallionfields, known as Quad 204, seeks to tap into an estimatedadditional 450 million barrels of oil equivalent to help extendproduction from the fields to 2035, BP said.
The development involves the installation of a new floating,production, storage and offloading vessel, the Glen Lyon, whichis due to arrive in the North Sea in 2016. It will be able toexport up to 130,000 barrels of oil a day and store up to 1million barrels.
Production is expected to start in the fourth quarter of2016, a company spokesman said.
New subsea pipelines are expected to be installed this year,BP said.
The two fields, located around 100 miles west of the Shetlanislands, produced nearly 400 million barrels of oil sinceproduction started in 1998, BP said.
The drilling in the Loyal field will be carried out by theDeepsea Aberdeen rig which is operated by Odfjell Drilling.
BP and rival Royal Dutch Shell each have a 50 percentinterest in the Loyal field. Schiehallion is owned by BP, Shelland Austria's OMV. (Reporting by Ron Bousso, additional reporting by ClaireMilhench; editing by Jason Neely and David Evans)
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