North Sea – next life: extending the commercial life of producing North Sea fields

Abstract

In 2015, the North Sea petroleum province was 50 years old. The celebrations were short lived because oil prices and gas prices were in free fall. The demand from the UK market had outstripped demand back in 2005 and, 10 years on, falling production and increasing operating expenditure, when coupled with falling prices, had brought the North Sea to crisis point. Many fields became unprofitable and companies began to close down. In an effort to avert the developing crisis, this work examines what options exist for better utilizing the North Sea industry, be that monetizing co-produced fluids or using the pore space once occupied by petroleum for waste products such as carbon dioxide. We briefly examine: the possibility of utilizing heat from the co-produced fluids for power generation; extracting gases and ores from co-produced fluids; and evaluation of the role that carbon dioxide could play in enhanced oil and gas recovery, as well as its ultimate long-term storage in geological deep storage.

Repurposing Hydrocarbon Wells for Geothermal Use in the UK: The Onshore Fields with the Greatest Potential

“…The geothermal potential of hydrocarbon wells has been investigated by several authors, with pilot projects implemented worldwide and pre-feasibility studies carried out (e.g., [18][19][20][21][22][23][24]). Although offshore hydrocarbon fields offer geothermal energy potential (e.g., [19,23,25]), it is likely that only electricity generation would be appealing in such remote environments and exclusively for in-project utilisation, unless interconnecting export grids become available (e.g., from Iceland). However, as reported by [26,27] for the East Midlands Petroleum Province in the UK, an opportunity may exist whereby onshore hydrocarbon wells could be repurposed to provide geothermal heat, which may contribute significantly to meeting the heat demand of local housing stock or indeed of commercial or agricultural users ( Figure 1).…”

Paleozoic plays of NW Europe: an introduction

“…IEAGHG 2009; Underhill et al 2009;SCCS 2015) and geothermal energy (e.g. Gluyas et al 2016) may also become economically viable and socially desirable.…”

The Petroleum Geology of NW Europe: 50 years of learning – a platform for present value and future success. An overview

“…The other papers in this session reflect how industry is adopting new tools and approaches to create and deliver the next cycle of value to the region. Gluyas et al's (2016) keynote broadens the discussion to look at the potential response to the environmental challenges confronting the industry with discussion of future options and opportunities. Marshall et al (2017) offer an elegant description of the Goldeneye Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project that was planned to revitalize this former gas-condensate reservoir in the Moray Firth (funding for the CCS competition was withdrawn shortly after the conference).…”