North Sea operator Zennor Petroleum is pleased with progress on its Finlaggan gas condensate development in the UK central North Sea and is confident of going onstream with a subsea tie-back to the Britiannia facilities late next year, as planned.

Zennor managing director Martin Rowe this week told Upstream that Finlaggan would be 85% to 90% complete by the end of the year.

“We are really pleased with progress....the project is practically done and fully de-risked. We are in a good place,” Rowe said of the scheme, which was sanctioned last year.

Zennor, backed by Kerogen Capital, completed development drilling and testing on the two development wells earlier this year.

Since then, an infield pipeline and umbilical has been laid between Finlaggan and Britannia, part of the package of assets UK independent Chrysaor is acquiring from US operator ConocoPhillips.

Work to place a structure at one of end of the pipeline is ongoing but once that is complete “that will be the 2019 programme out of the way", Rowe said.

Work will then restart next year to place another structure at the other end of the pipeline before final connections and tie-ins take place during a June shutdown at Britannia.

Rowe said the likely start-up date “is likely to be the fourth quarter, purely because of the timing of shutdown and commissioning work we have got to do at the end of that”.

Zennor owns a 100% interest in Finlaggan, in blocks 21/05c and 21/05d, with an estimated 30 million barrels of oil equivalent of reserves in the company's sights.

Rowe attributed the good progress to the large amount of engineering Zennor did up front as well as using a flexible approach with its suppliers, including main contractor TechnipFMC.

“We bid it on the basis of functional [specifications], so the companies could come back and provide a system that did what we needed it to do rather than being prescriptive about exactly what we wanted,” he said.

“Secondly, we gave the installation community the flexibility to install all the equipment either in summer 2019 or summer 2020. We were largely ambivalent about [timing] because we could not affect the final tie-ins on Britannia until summer 2020. And it gave them the flexibility to do things that fitted with their existing schedules and other jobs,” he said.

“I think that approach has led to a smooth execution.”

Zennor recently awarded Ancala Midstream a contract to process the Finlaggan gas through the Scottish Area Gas Evacuation terminal at St Fergus.

Weekly

Zennor buoyant over progress at Finlaggan field