Foinaven oilfield is a deep-water oil development approximately west of the

Shetland Islands Shetland (until 1975 spelled Zetland), also called the Shetland Islands, is an archipelago in Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the Uni ...

. Together with

Schiehallion Schiehallion (; , ) is a prominent cone-shaped mountain in the Breadalbane, Scotland, Breadalbane region of the Scottish Highlands, in the county of Perthshire. It rises to and is classed as a Munro. Schiehallion has a rich flora, interesting ...

, Loyal, Solan, Clair and

Lancaster Lancaster may refer to: Lands and titles *The County Palatine of Lancaster, a synonym for Lancashire *Duchy of Lancaster, one of only two British royal duchies *Duke of Lancaster *Earl of Lancaster *House of Lancaster, a British royal dynasty ...

fields it forms the area generally termed as the West of Shetland.

Field description

Foinaven oil field was discovered in 1992. It is located at a water depth of , and was the first development made beyond the

United Kingdom Continental Shelf The UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) is the region of waters surrounding the United Kingdom, in which the country has mineral rights. The UK continental shelf includes parts of the North Sea, the North Atlantic, the Irish Sea and the English Channel; th ...

. It is named after a mountain in the North West Highlands. Recoverable oil reserves of Foinaven are estimated to be between .

Production

The Foinaven field is operated by BP in partnership with RockRose Energy. The development of the field was sanctioned in 1994 and the oil production in Foinaven started in November 1997. The phase 1 with 21 wells was completed in 2000. It had a designed oil production capacity of of oil. Oil was produced by subsea wells via a manifold, which passed through rigid flowlines and then flexible risers into a Floating Production Storage and Offloading system (FPSO). The FPSO, Petrojarl Foinaven, which was operated by Teekay Petrojarl, had an overall length of and an oil storage capacity of . Surface process facilities consisted of two parallel oil separation and gas compression trains with a combined liquid handling capacity of of crude oil and of associated gas. It was permanently stationed in the field and the crude oil was exported by shuttle tankers. Oil was exported primarily to the

Flotta oil terminal The Flotta oil terminal is a major crude oil reception, processing, storage and export facility on the island of Flotta, in the south of Scapa Flow in the Orkney, Orkney Islands. It receives and processes crude oil delivered by a subsea pipeline ...

Orkney Orkney (), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago off the north coast of mainland Scotland. The plural name the Orkneys is also sometimes used, but locals now consider it outdated. Part of the Northern Isles along with Shetland, ...

with smaller amounts going to

Tranmere Oil Terminal Tranmere Oil Terminal is situated on the River Mersey, south of Birkenhead. It was opened on 8 June 1960 to handle vessels of up to 65,000 tons, at two berths (North and South). It is connected to the Stanlow Oil Refinery by a crude oil pipeli ...

Merseyside Merseyside ( ) is a ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial and metropolitan county in North West England. It borders Lancashire to the north, Greater Manchester to the east, Cheshire to the south, the Wales, Welsh county of Flintshire across ...

. Approximately half of the produced associated gas was used for

enhanced oil recovery Enhanced oil recovery (abbreviated EOR), also called tertiary recovery, is the extraction of crude oil from an oil field that cannot be extracted after primary and secondary recovery methods have been completely exhausted. Whereas primary and se ...

in the field. The remainder was exported through the West of Shetland pipeline to the Sullom Voe Terminal. Some of the exported gas was used as fuel in the

Fortum Fortum Oyj is a Finland, Finnish Government of Finland, state-owned energy company located in Espoo, Finland. It mainly focuses on the Nordic countries, Nordic region. Fortum operates power plants, including co-generation plants, and generate ...

operated Sullom Voe power station. The remainder was enriched with

liquefied petroleum gas Liquefied petroleum gas, also referred to as liquid petroleum gas (LPG or LP gas), is a fuel gas which contains a flammable mixture of hydrocarbon gases, specifically propane, Butane, ''n''-butane and isobutane. It can also contain some ...

and exported to the Magnus platform for enhanced oil recovery in the Magnus field. According to BP, to date, 390 million barrels of oil have been recovered from the Foinaven area.

Suspension of Production

In April 2021, BP suspended production from the Foinaven field as the long-serving FPSO Petrojarl Foinaven through which the fields were producing oil was nearing the end of its 25-year design life. It was removed in 2022 to be scrapped at

Frederikshavn Frederikshavn () is a Danish town in Frederikshavn municipality, Region Nordjylland, on the northeast coast on the North Jutlandic Island in northern Denmark. Its name translates to "Frederik's harbor". It was originally named Fladstrand. The ...

in Denmark. BP and its partners have begun evaluating options to develop the estimated remaining resources of up to a possible 200 million barrels from the Foinaven field and surrounding area.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Foinaven Oil fields west of Shetland BP oil and gas fields