Ithaca Energy has been celebrating the 25th year of production on the Erskine gas field.
Located 150 miles east of Aberdeen, first gas flowed from the platform in November 1997.
Ithaca Energy said this is “A fantastic achievement for a dedicated team.”
Throughout its quarter-century lifetime, Erskine has claimed a number of North Sea firsts.
The normally unattended installation (NUI) was the first high-pressure, high-temperature field to be developed in the UK North Sea.
It was among the first platforms to implement full-scale NUI HP/HT wire line interventions from a mast rig, to introduce boat-to-platform coil tubing activities, and to implement NUI HPHT deep hole coiling tubing activities.
Erskine was also the first platform to implement Walk to Work in the Central North Sea.
The Normally Unattended Installation stands in blocks 23/26a and 23/26b and is remotely controlled from Harbour Energy’s Lomond platform.
Standing in water depths of 296 feet, it sports an 18.6-mile-long pipeline linking to its operator platform.
Erskine is operated by Ithaca Energy which has a 50% stake in the field, with Harbour Energy owning 32% non-operated interest and Serica Energy claiming the remaining 18%.
Jeff Schmoll and his wife created a tapestry of Erskine (shown below) to mark the platform’s last major anniversary, 20 years of production, following his work on the field.
The former Aberdeen resident has since taken the embroidery with him through subsequent assignments in Houston, Louisiana, and Angola.
Pipeline bypass
The Erskine field made most of its headlines in 2018 while the pipeline bypass project was underway.
The new pipeline was constructed to solve recurring issues with wax build-up at the Erskine field.
The bypass pipeline was proposed by Harbour Energy (formerly Chrysaor), the-operator of the field, in 2018 and was suggested to be a long-term solution to the field’s wax build-up issue.
This work took the platform offline in January and original estimations said it would come back onstream in September but delays pushed this back to October.
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