Offshore staff
PARIS– Total says two of its offshore development projects have been delayed to varying degrees following an accident in May at the Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) shipyard in Geoje, South Korea, which led to multiple fatalities.
The company has seconded specialists to the investigation into the causes of the accident, and all works at the yard were suspended for several days, said Arnaud Breuillac, President, Exploration & Production at Total.
Work related to theMartin Linge project, 180 km (112 mi) west of Bergen in the Norwegian North Sea, were suspended until June 1, and this has delayed shipment of modules from the yard to Norway.
Installation of the modules and lifting operations can only be performed in the summertime due to prevailing weather conditions in the Norwegian North Sea and these have now had to be postponed until summer 2018. Taking into account subsequent hookup and commissioning operations, the production start has now been pushed back to the first half of 2019.
Work on the Nigerian deepwaterEgina FPSO resumed following a two-week suspension and in this case the impact on the project, expected to start up during the second half of 2018, will be limited.
TheEgina development is in block OML 130, 150 km (93 mi) off the Nigerian coast.
As for thecentral processing facility for the INPEX-operated Ichthys project offshore northwest Australia, this had already departed the Geoje yard several days before the accident and is now installed on the field.
Start-up of Ichthys has therefore not been impacted and should go ahead during 1Q 2018.
07/06/2017
