UK Industry Seeks to Improve Offshore Efficiency

British offshore industry association Oil & Gas UK has published guidelines designed to boost production efficiency, it said July 18, to address the 20 percentage point loss in efficiency between 2004 and 2012, when it was down to 60%. Since then it has climbed back up to 73%, so only 7 percentage points lower than in 2004, when UK output was relatively high. The target is to reach 80% once more.

Gas compression losses accounted for over 40mn barrels of oil equivalent in unplanned production losses in 2015 so the guidelines suggest ways to improve performance in this area.

The Production Efficiency Task Force chair Matt Nicol, who is operations director of North Sea Midstream Partners, said: "Gas systems are a key priority for our group, having been identified as being one of the largest sources of production loss. The Gas Compression Work Group, which produced this new guidance document, is made up of cross-industry expert volunteers who have worked together to share lessons learned and best practices."

Oil & Gas UK’s director of business excellence Stephen Marcus Jones said: "The drive to increase industry efficiency requires companies to adopt new ways of working and share lessons and good practice. By streamlining our procedures and working practices across industry, we can continue to minimise downtime and maximise economic recovery."

Last month UK offshore regulator OGA published its own report, UKCS Production Efficiency in 2016, comparing actual production in 2016 to the theoretical maximum economic potential of the fields and associated infrastructure, and also comparing that data for previous years. 

William Powell