Elgin Wellhead Platform
 
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Location of the Elgin Wellhead Platform in the North Sea |
The Elgin Wellhead Platform is a production platform of the French Total group for natural gas and oil in the North Sea. It is located approximately 240 km east of the Scottish Aberdeen and promotes the occurrence of the same name Elgin-Franklin field.
From March 25 to May 16, 2012 there was an uncontrolled gas leak due to an incident .
construction
| Parameter | value |
|---|---|
| Mass of the platform | 1842 t |
| Mass of the substructure | 2715 t |
| Dimensions of the deck | 25.5 m × 34 m |
The base of the Elgin Wellhead Platform consists of a four-legged steel structure. The actual platform is mounted on it. This is designed for unmanned operation and is controlled remotely from the adjacent Elgin Production / Utilities / Quarters platform (PUQ).
Infrastructure
The Elgin Wellhead Platform is connected to the PUQ platform by a 90 m long bridge. This carries the transport lines for the extracted oil and gas as well as energy supply and control lines for the platform itself. The extracted raw products are processed on the PUQ platform and brought from there to the coast via pipelines. The Forties Pipeline System will transport the oil via Cruden Bay to Kinneil , County Fife , while the gas will be transported via the 468 km SEAL (Shearwater Elgin Area Line) to Bacton in Norfolk .
Daily production of around 9 million cubic meters of gas and 60,000 barrels of light oil represent 3% and 5.5% of total UK production, respectively.
history
The Elgin Field was discovered in 1991. The water depth in this area is 93 m, the deposits in the sandstone are 5600 m below the sea surface. Due to the high pressures and temperatures of 1100 bar and 190 ° C, numerous technical difficulties had to be overcome to develop the deposits . Due to the geographical proximity to the Franklin field discovered in 1986, joint development of the deposits was sought. In 1995, an agreement was reached between the project partners to create a production platform and a joint production and processing platform for each field.
Drilling began in March 1997. The Elgin field was developed with a total of five wells drilled from the Galaxy 1 drilling platform . In March 2001, funding was started on the Elgin Wellhead Platform .
2012 natural gas leak
On March 25, 2012, at 12:15 p.m., there was a blowout , a leak in one of the boreholes, causing an uncontrolled gas leak until mid-May 2012. Total estimated the amount of gas escaping at the beginning at around 200,000 cubic meters per day. In a similar incident in 1990 at another drilling field, a natural gas leak occurred in the North Sea , which has since released 300,000 tons of methane annually.
The incident was the worst in the North Sea for the energy company in a decade. Most of the gas escaping was methane , but it also contained propane , butane and hydrogen sulfide . Since it was flammable and potentially explosive, a safety zone of 2 nautical miles (nm) for ships and 3 nm for aircraft was set up around the drilling platform and the electricity was switched off. The PUQ platform was evacuated and the crew moved to other nearby platforms. A core team of 19 of the originally 238 strong crew initially remained on board, but was later withdrawn as well. According to eyewitness reports, problems with the borehole had already arisen. The incident occurred while trying to shut down the relevant well.
According to the total, the actual leak was 4,000 meters below the seabed, but the gas escaped below the platform above the water surface. On March 30, 2012, an oily film over ten kilometers long and more than one kilometer wide could be seen on the surface of the water.
As with many such systems, unwanted residual gases are also flared off freely and visibly with the Elgin through high pipes on the system. Such gases occur regularly in the production of natural gas. The gas flare on the Elgin platform continued to burn for a few days after the accident and initially represented the greatest danger with regard to the uncontrolled escape of gas 90 meters below the flame. An explosion of the gas and destruction of the platform could not be ruled out. This scenario would not have threatened human life, but all technical means would have been lost with which the gas could have been stopped promptly. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung , an environmental disaster would then hardly have been averted. On March 31, 2012, Total announced that the gas flare had gone out. According to the company, the amount of gas escaping had fallen to 50,000 cubic meters per day at the beginning of May 2012.
On May 15, 2012, Total began pumping mud into the well to seal it. With this measure, the gas leak could be closed twelve hours later, according to the company.
Reactions and assessments
After the incident became known, many experts and environmental protection organizations pointed out the environmental risks of offshore conveyor technology.
The Norwegian environmental protection organization Bellona Foundation estimated the risks to the environment from the Elgin accident to be lower than from the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, because hardly any oil leaked from the Scottish field. Gas and a condensate, a yellowish, diesel-like liquid, escaped from the borehole. This forms a film of dirt on the water, but is much thinner than petroleum and evaporates over time.
Bellona nevertheless feared damage to the fauna and flora of the North Sea. In addition, the escaping methane is a very effective greenhouse gas .
The operating company Total suffered considerable damage to its image as a result of the accident: the value of Total shares collapsed and in a few days the company lost six billion euros in market value . Had the gas field been completely destroyed, Total would have had to compensate its partners in the oil field. According to the rating agency Fitch, the value of the company would have fallen by around 5.7 billion euros.
Shortly after the gas leak was closed, Hans-Jochen Luhmann from the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy rated the climate damage caused by the greenhouse gas effect as comparatively low.
See also
Web links
- Operator's website
- Operator's website on the incident on March 25, 2012 (English / French)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Elgin / Franklin. (PDF; 3.5 MB) (No longer available online.) Total Fina Elf SA, archived from the original on September 7, 2012 ; accessed on March 26, 2012 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b Elgin / Franklin. (PDF; 548 kB) (No longer available online.) Total E&P UK plc, archived from the original on August 7, 2012 ; accessed on March 26, 2012 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Basler Zeitung : Highly explosive gas is emanating from the Elgin platform. dated March 28, 2012. Retrieved March 30, 2012.
- ^ Elgin / Franklin, an exceptional development. Total SA, accessed on March 26, 2012 (French).
- ↑ J.-L. Bergerot: Advanced Drilling in HP / HT: Total's Experience on Elgin / Franklin (UK North Sea). (PDF; 1.3 MB) In: JPT. Society of Petroleum Engineers, 2011, accessed March 26, 2012 .
- ^ Elgin-Franklin, United Kingdom. In: offshore-technology.com. Retrieved March 26, 2012 (English).
- ^ Elgin / Franklin Facts & Figures. (No longer available online.) Total Holdings UK Limited, archived from the original on March 30, 2012 ; Retrieved March 26, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Press statement 4 - 25 March 2012. Total E&P UK Ltd, March 25, 2012, accessed on March 30, 2012 (English, press release).
- ^ Status on UK - Gas leak incident at Elgin platform in the North Sea. Total, March 30, 2012, accessed March 31, 2012 (English, press release).
- ^ German Bundestag: Small Inquiry: Natural gas blowout off the coast of Scotland. (PDF) Retrieved February 16, 2017 .
- ↑ Serious accident: North Sea platform surrounded by a gas cloud. Handelsblatt, March 27, 2012, accessed on March 27, 2012 .
- ↑ Gas leak in the North Sea: Second energy company pulls workers from oil rig. In: Spiegel Online. March 27, 2012. Retrieved March 27, 2012 .
- ^ Gas leak in the North Sea - several oil rigs evacuated. In: tagesschau.de. March 27, 2012, archived from the original on March 29, 2012 ; Retrieved March 27, 2012 .
- ↑ Press Statement 3 - March 25, 2012. Total E&P UK Ltd, March 25, 2012, accessed on March 30, 2012 (English, press release).
- ↑ News Release 5. Total E&P UK Ltd, March 26, 2012, accessed on March 30, 2012 (English, press release).
- ↑ Gas leak: Energy company evacuates North Sea drilling platform. In: Spiegel Online. March 26, 2012. Retrieved March 26, 2012 .
- ↑ gas cloud encircles Total's Elgin-Franklin platform- union. Reuters, March 26, 2012, accessed March 26, 2012 .
- ↑ "Elgin" gas platform in the North Sea: Total locates the leak above the water level. In: Focus Online. March 29, 2012, accessed March 30, 2012 .
- ↑ Elgin Update 4. Total E&P UK Ltd, March 28, 2012, accessed March 30, 2012 (English, press release).
- ↑ Gas leak on oil rig in the North Sea: Total is gearing up for explosion on Elgin platform. In: Süddeutsche.de. March 29, 2012. Retrieved March 29, 2012 .
- ↑ Patrick Illinger : Total localized gas leak on oil rig "Elgin": "We think we know where it is". In: Süddeutsche.de. March 29, 2012, accessed March 30, 2012 .
- ^ Extinguishing of the flare on the Elgin platform. Total E&P UK Ltd, March 31, 2012, accessed March 31, 2012 (English, press release).
- ↑ Elgin gas leak: Weekly Update (4 - 10 May 2012). Total E&P UK Ltd, May 10, 2012, accessed May 12, 2012 (English, press release).
- ↑ Start of the well intervention operation to stop the Elgin leak. Total E&P UK Ltd, May 15, 2012, accessed May 15, 2012 (English, press release).
- ↑ Elgin leak stopped after well intervention. Total E&P UK Ltd, May 16, 2012, accessed May 16, 2012 (English, press release).
- ↑ North Sea Platform - "Elgin" gas leak is plugged. In: Spiegel Online. May 16, 2012. Retrieved May 16, 2012 .
- ↑ Matthias Thibaut: Elgin gas platform: Total is considering extinguishing work on the North Sea platform. Tagesspiegel, March 30, 2012, accessed March 30, 2012 .
- ↑ Elgin is stuffed - more damage to companies than to the environment. Deutschlandfunk, May 18, 2012, accessed on May 21, 2012 (interview with Hans-Jochen Luhmann from the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy).
