Repsol reopens North Sea subject after oil spill-related shutdown

Spanish oil and fuel firm Repsol has skilled manufacturing interruption at its operated Yme subject situated within the North Sea offshore Norway however the subject has now been restarted.

The Yme subject was shut in through the Easter holidays following the detection of a minor oil spill, Repsol’s associate, OKEA, reported this week. On Thursday, OKEA was knowledgeable by Repsol Norge concerning the manufacturing restart.

In keeping with OKEA, the supply of the leak has been recognized in a pipe between the wellhead platform and the subsea storage tank. Till the difficulty is mounted, Yme will produce on to a big tanker vessel, Bodil Knudsen, beginning at first of Could. The tanker’s storage capability is about 1 million barrels of oil.

OKEA famous that there’s nonetheless uncertainty associated to the volumes from Yme as the sphere remains to be within the ramp-up part. Manufacturing from Yme is deliberate to ramp as much as plateau manufacturing throughout 3Q 2022.

That is the second introduced shutdown of the Yme subject following the one in November 2021, lower than a month after the primary oil. The sphere had been shut down in November as a way to “assess the excessive oil in water readings.”

The Yme subject is situated within the Egersund Basin, roughly 130 km from the Norwegian shoreline. It was first introduced on stream by Equinor again in 1996 solely to be shut down in 2001 because of the low oil worth atmosphere, rendering it unprofitable on the time.

Repsol took over the venture in 2015. In December 2017, Repsol submitted a revised PDO for the sphere, which was authorised in March 2018. The brand new improvement venture for the sphere entailed the engineering, procurement and set up of a brand new wellhead module on prime of the present services, the modifications and upgrading of the Maersk Inspirer cellular offshore drilling and manufacturing unit previous to set up within the subject and subsequent hook-up to present wells in and installations on the seabed offshore.

Following years of delays, the Yme subject began producing once more in late October 2021. It was one of many first oil fields on the Norwegian shelf to be redeveloped after it was shut down.