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The Hibernia field, which was discovered in 1979, is
located  (pdf - 265kb)
about 315 kilometres east southeast of St. John's,
Newfoundland in 80 metres of water. A fixed production platform,
consisting of a Gravity Base Structure (GBS) and Topsides drilling
and production facilities, has been installed to produce the field.
The GBS and one of the five topsides super modules were built at
Bull Arm,
Newfoundland, and the four other super modules were fabricated in
Korea and Italy before being transported to Bull Arm for assembly.
The platform is 224 metres tall and weighs 1.2 million tonnes
(including 500,000 tonnes of solid ballast) and has a design
production capacity of 150,000 barrels per day.
Produced oil is stored within the platform’s 1.3 million barrel
internal storage cells while produced natural gas and sea water are
being injected into the reservoir for pressure maintenance and
enhanced oil recovery. The crude oil is transported to shore by
three purpose built shuttle tankers (Kometik, Mattea and Vinland),
each with 850,000 barrel storage capacity. Since October 3, 1998,
shipments of oil from Hibernia have been offloaded at the newly-built
transshipment facility at Whiffen Head, Placentia Bay.
The GBS is the first of its kind. A fifteen metre thick concrete
ice-wall provides protection from sea ice and icebergs. The platform
is designed to withstand the impact of a six million tonne iceberg,
which would statistically be expected to occur once in 10,000 years.
The Hibernia development has been the cornerstone of the Province’s
growing oil and gas sector and has supported the expansion of local
infrastructure including the construction of a heliport, marine base,
pipeyard, warehouse and a platform control room training
simulator.
Hibernia Production
First-oil production from Hibernia occurred
on November 17, 1997, at 1:40 pm. The first tanker load of crude oil
was off-loaded in late December, 1997. Cumulative Oil Production
statistics are released by the
Department of Finance and can be found on their website. The Canada-Newfoundland
Offshore Petroleum Board's estimates of this field's reserves can be found on
the C-NLOPB's website.
Development drilling of the shallower Ben Nevis/Avalon reservoir began
in April 2000 from the Hibernia platform. The first of these wells is
currently producing about 12,000 bopd.
In November, 1997, Mobil Oil announced that it increased its estimate
of Hibernia recoverable reserves from 615 to 750 million barrels.
Further reserve increases are possible with improvements in recovery
technologies and delineation of an undrilled area to the southwest
of the developed area. In May 2000 the C-NOPB increased its
recoverable reserve estimate for Hibernia from 666 to 884 million
barrels.
Record Setting Wells
During 1998 the Hibernia B-16-1 well
set a Canadian daily flow rate record when it tested at 56,000
barrels of oil per day. The previous record of 27,000 bopd was held
by the Panuke field, offshore Nova Scotia. Hibernia is also breaking
new ground in directional drilling. The development wells are being
directionally drilled from two rigs on the GBS into the Hibernia
Sandstone which lies at a depth of about 3800 metres and the Ben
Nevis/Avalon Sandstone at about 2400 metres. During 1998 the
Hibernia B-16-5 well was drilled to a length of 6955 metres - setting
a new Canadian record for well length. Since then Hibernia has
continued to break its own records. The B-16-10Z well reached a
length of 7260 metres and the B-16-11 well, at 8495 metres, became
the 13th longest well ever drilled. Additional information
on Hibernia well activity can be found on The
Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum
Board's website.
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