Piper Oil Field

Summary Information

• Operator: Repsol
• Country: UK
• Location: central North Sea
• Production start: 1976
• Partners:
• Type: Oil & Gas
• Estimated Reserves:
• Production Volume:

+++ Description

• The Piper field lies in block 15/17 of the United Kingdom Continental Shelf located 193 km north east of Aberdeen in the central North Sea. The Piper Bravo platform stands in approximately 145m of water. Piper B is an eight legged steel jacket supported platform.
• The field is connected by an oil pipeline to the Flotta terminal
• Piper Bravo’s process facilities separate production from the Piper, **Saltire**, **Chanter**, **Iona** and ** Tweedsmuir** reservoirs into oil, natural gas liquids (NGLs) and dry gas.
• The platform recieves oil from the MacCulloch Oil And Gas Field for onward transmission to Flotta Oil Terminal.
• Piper also recieves gas from the MacCulloch and Dumbarton fields.

+++ Contractors

• **McDermott:** Construction of Piper Bravo Platform and Saltire platform
• **Wharton Williams:** Pipeline plugging/abandonment for Piper Alpha

+++ History

• 1976 - Piper Oil Field development approved
• 1987 - Government approval for Chanter development
• 1988 - 167 people lost their lives when the Piper Alpha platform caught fire. It is the worst disaster in the history of UK North Sea oil
• 1991 - Saltire field development approved
• 1992 - Piper bravo platform installed
• 1996 - Iona development receives approval
• 2000 - Talisman acquired a stake in the field
• 2004 - Talisman acquired an additional 19.6% stake in the field from intrepid
• 2015 - Repsol became a partner by acquiring Talisman Sinopec

+++ Geology

• Piper Field, discovered in 1973, lies at the edge of an arm of the buried rift valley. Oil in this field is trapped within a tilted sandstone layer cut by faults. The sandstone was deposited 145 million years ago, during late Jurassic times, as sand bars around a series of river deltas.
• Kimmeridge Clay source rock overlies the oil-filled sandstone, acting as part of the seal. However, the trapped oil is mostly derived from within the rift valley, on the south side of the field, where source rock is thicker and hotter.
• The oil has migrated to the field area at some time after a mudrock seal was laid down 70 million years after the sand. Oil is prevented from leaking out at the faults, or from the eroded edges of the sandstone, by this seal. About one cubic kilometre of the sand is filled with 150 billion litres of oil over an area of 30 square kilometres.

+++ Links

1. A closer look at some North Sea fields
2. Piper Bravo, Talisman
3. Piper Alpha: Lessons Learnt, 2008
4. UK Oil and Gas Fields by Approval Date
5. List Of Oil and Gas Production Platforms In The UK
6. UK Oil and Gas Field Approved Decommissioning Programmes
7. Bibby Offshore Subsea References
8. FoundOcean Europe Subsea References
9. Talisman Energy Acquires North Sea Core Area Interests From Intrepid
10. Talisman Confirms Major North Sea Asset Deals
11. Repsol reaches an agreement with Talisman Energy to acquire the Canadian oil company