Woodside progressing North West Shelf subsea tieback project, Browse gas studies
The Woodside Energy-led North West Shelf (NWS) joint venture has approved orders for long-lead items for the Greater Western Flank Phase 4 project offshore Western Australia.
This will be a five-well subsea tieback to established NWS offshore facilities. FID should go through later this year, with the added gas production helping to offset a predicted shortfall in supply to the Western Australia market post-2028, according to Woodside's first-quarter results update.
In the Bass Strait offshore southeast Australia, Woodside, as partner to ExxonMobil, recently approved investments in the Kipper 1B and Turrum Phase 3 projects. Kipper 1B should expand gas production capacity from the Kipper field via a new subsea well and upgrades to the West Tuna platform.
Turrum Phase 3 is a five-well infill development of the Turrum and North Turrum fields, with associated topsides modifications to the topsides of the Marlin B platform. Production should start in 2027.
Offshore Victoria, a mobile offshore drilling unit is at the Minerva field, preparing to plug and abandon (P&A) the first of three Minerva wells. Decommissioning continues on other nearby fields, with P&A completed so far on 27 wells, including those on the Bream B platform.
P&A also has started on the Kingfish A and Cobia platforms.
Offshore Western Australia, the hull of the floating production unit (FPU) for the Scarborough gas-condensate development has left its second dry dock, with the topsides loaded onto a transport barge ahead of integration activities.
At the field location, installation has begun of the subsea production risers and pre-installation of the FPU mooring chains has finished, as has batch drilling of the intermediate sections of the development wells.
Farther north, work continues to optimize the development concept for the offshore Browse to NWS project, with commercial discussions underway on processing Browse volumes through the onshore Karratha Gas Plant.
Gulf of Mexico updates
In the US Gulf of Mexico, Woodside restored a well at the Shenzi field to production late last year.
At the Atlantis field, well intervention campaigns have ended and work is underway on an infill sidetrack producer.
Production from the Mad Dog field's Argos platform has improved following riser gas lift.
Finally, Woodside's deepwater Trion oil project in the Mexican sector was 26% complete at the end of the first quarter. First steel has been cut for both the three FPU topside modules in South Korea and the floating storage and offloading facility disconnectable turret mooring system in China.
