• Wednesday, 16 May, 2012

Rewriting the Constitution

 18 August 2005 23:02 GMT

The project team at Kerr-McGee had a plan heading into the company's $600 million Constitution development in the deep-water Gulf.

With similar reserve size and overall hydrocarbon make-up as its successful, schedule-beating Gunnison project to the west, the operator elected to push forward with a carbon copy truss spar development.

The facility would be a Gunnison twin, capable of producing 40,000 barrels per day of oil and 200 million cubic feet per day of natural gas.

The development was approved and construction soon began. But a funny thing happened in the early stages of the project. Kerr-McGee made an oil discovery to the south of Constitution called Ticonderoga.

The company faced a dilemma, though a good one to have: build out Constitution as planned and backfill the facility with the new find, or take pause and try to work in additional capacity to host a pair of Ticonderoga wells at start-up.

"We looked at the model for the production profile at Constitution and saw that there was a pretty substantial plateau before oil production started to fall off," says Kerr-McGee's Constitution project manager Mike Beattie. "We decided that we did not want to wait until production started to slide before we commenced Ticonderoga.

"It was a tough decision because we were certainly aware of other industry projects that have made changes late in the game and suffered cost overruns, schedule delays or both," recalls Beattie. "We were able to make the changes and now are back on the original schedule set for the Constitution base-case design and fabrication."

The Constitution project is about 75% complete, according to Kerr-McGee. All construction work is essentially done and the export pipelines have been installed offshore.

Allseas pipelay ship Lorelay laid the 70-mile, 16-inch oil line and 35-mile (112-kilometre), 16-inch gas line. The next milestone is installation of the spar hull in almost 5000 feet of water on Green Canyon block 680, which is slated for late this year and will be carried out by Heerema's derrick semisub Balder.

The Balder will also pick up the export lines and hook them into the spar once hull installation is complete.

The 110 million-barrel Constitution field is slated to come on stream in mid-2006. It will be produced via six dry tree wells. Most of the reserves at the field are oil, except for the Amp-4 sand to the west, which is a gas reservoir. There are seven hydrocarbon-bearing zones in the field.

"We have good porosity ranging from 28% to 30%," says Susan Holley, Gulf of Mexico asset manager for Kerr-McGee. "We have good permeability, about 800 milidarcies, and we also have good fluid out there, about 32 degrees."

The 98-foot diameter, 554-foot long Constitution hull arrived at Technip's Gulf Marine Fabrication in Ingleside, Texas, from its Pori, Finland, facility in July.

The final touches are being applied to the 127-foot by 176-foot, three-level Constitution deck at Gulf Island Fabrication in Houma, Louisiana.

The expanded production module can now handle 70,000 bpd of oil while gas handling remains steady at 200 million cubic feet per day. The topsides will be installed by Heerema's massive Thialf crane barge during the first quarter of 2006.

Drilling is currently ongoing at the estimated 50 million-barrel Ticonderoga satellite in block 768. Diamond Offshore semisub Ocean Star should wrap up drilling and completion work on the pair of planned subsea wells in October.

Once the rig is out of the way, the Ticonderoga flowlines will be installed by Technip Offshore pipelay ship Deep Blue.

"We have drilled all six of the Constitution development wells," confirms Beattie. "They have been temporarily abandoned and we will come back and complete those once the spar has been installed. We will mobilise a workover rig onto the top deck and with that rig we will install the riser system and begin completing the wells."

Kerr-McGee operates Constitution with a 100% stake. The company operates the Ticonderoga find with a one-half stake. Noble Energy holds the remaining 50%.

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