Project Profile
Value: US$103 million
Location: Irish Sea UK
Peak Production: 70,000 barrels per day
Reserves: 150 million barrels of oil and 1.2 trillion ft³ of gas
The Liverpool Bay Development - BHP Petroleum\'s largest single project worldwide - comprises four oil and gas fields, together with significant offshore and onshore facilities used for extracting, transporting and processing these reserves. Offshore operations are centred on the Douglas complex - a three-platform facility that monitors and controls the development\'s three unmanned satellite platforms at Lennox, Hamilton and Hamilton North. Oil and gas from all four fields are received at Douglas. The oil - produced from the Lennox and Douglas fields - is then processed, blended and sent through a 20km pipeline, to the offshore storage installation, before being loaded into tankers, for export worldwide. Gas - extracted from Hamilton and Hamilton North as well as from Lennox - is part-processed on Douglas before it travels via a 34km pipeline to BHP\'s state-of-the-art gas terminal, at Point of Ayr, on the North Wales coast.
Lennox, Hamilton and Hamilton North
Lennox, Hamilton and Hamilton North are satellite production platforms, linked by pipeline and communications systems to the Douglas Complex. In order to reduce their size and visual impact, the three platforms are unmanned. Despite this, the regular servicing of these facilities still takes place thanks to the Irish Sea Pioneer - a mobile, self-elevating operations support vessel (OSV), which moves around the development to carry out testing, inspection and maintenance. Once in position alongside a platform, the OSV lowers its four giant legs onto the sea bed and then lifts itself out of the water to the level of the platform deck. A bridge link is then created between the satellite and the OSV to allow engineers and technicians to carry out their work.
The total recoverable reserves in Liverpool Bay are currently estimated to be in excess of 150 million barrels of oil and 1.2 trillion ft³ of gas. With peak oil production expected to average some 70,000 barrels per day, and a peak gas capacity of 300 million ft³ per day, the life of the development is projected to be at least 20 years. All of the oil produced in Liverpool Bay is sent from Douglas to the development\'s offshore storage installation - an 870,000bbl capacity tanker, which is permanently moored outside shipping lanes in the Irish Sea. Designed with safety as a key priority, the OSI is a double-sided vessel - with its ten cargo tanks flanked by segregated 4.8m wide seawater ballast tanks. As well as being manned around the clock, it is protected by an 800m exclusion zone, which is continuously monitored by radar and patrolled 24 hours a day by a high-powered support boat.
Operator:
BHP Billiton Plc: Operator with 100% interest
Contractor:
Petrofac: O&M contract
Fendercare Marine Diving Services (FMDS): Contract to provide significant diving services and equipment for an offshore installation. Fendercare Marine Diving Services mobilised the DPII Diving Support Vessel “Seabed Worker”, complete with a full air diving & nitrox surface demand diving spread, two work class ROV’s, a complete pipeline hydrographic survey facility and the James Fisher Hydro-Digger (mass flow excavator) for survey and remedial works to the assets located offshore in Liverpool Bay. The work scopes included the hydrographic surveys and mooring integrity surveys. (Dec, 2014)