DEA approves revised plans for North Sea Hejre oil field development

Offshore staff

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — The Danish Energy Agency (DEA) has approved INEOS E&P’s revised plan for the expansion and extraction of hydrocarbons of the HP/HT Hejre Field in the North Sea.

It has also granted INEOS an exemption from the obligation to connect to the Danish oil pipe pursuant to section 2(3) of the Danish Pipeline Act.

The application for development and operation of the field includes an environmental impact assessment for the project in license 5/98.

Construction activities outlined in the revised development plan are due to begin next year with first production expected by the end of 2027. The anticipated oil and gas volumes up to 2045 will account for just over 7% of output from all Danish North Sea fields over the same period.

The approval covers installation of an unmanned platform module on the existing steel Hejre jacket, a new 30-km-long multiphase pipeline and a supply line to the Syd Arne platform, and a new inlet module on Syd Arne's eastern wellhead platform.

INEOS plans production through three wells, all of which have already been drilled. All production will be processed at Syd Arne along with volumes from the Blackbird and South Arne fields. Oil will be transferred to the Syd Arne storage tank on the seabed and exported from there using the existing buoy load system to tankers.

Gas will be routed through the Syd Arne-Nybro pipeline to the onshore plant in Nybro, for onward passage through Energinet's transmission pipeline network.

In 2011 the DEA approved a plan for the expansion and operation of Hejre, but there have been subsequent delays to the project, notably technical and quality challenges related to construction of the Hejre platform, which led to interruption of the work in 2016.

So the field has only been partly developed and has not yet entered production.

Post-2016, the licensees reassessed the reserves and prepared an alternative technical proposal for completing the development, with a shorter production period compared to the original estimates from 2011.

Hejre is 300 km from Denmark’s west coast, with the oil located more than 5,000 m beneath the seabed, the deepest for any Danish oil field. 

04.26.2024