UK authorities have approved the plan for the removal of the Petrojarl Banff FPSO and Apollo Spirit FSO from Canadian Natural Resources’ Banff and Kyle fields in the UK sector of the Central North Sea.
The Banff field is located in blocks 29/2a and 22/27a some 200 kilometres east of Aberdeen in approximately 95 meters of water.
The Kyle field is located in block 29/2c and 29/2h which are on the same distance from Aberdeen and in similar water depth.
There is one drill centre for the Banff and two drill centres for the Kyle field – North Kyle and South Kyle. The Banff wells and manifolds are located 1.6 kilometres southeast of the Petrojarl Banff FPSO while the Kyle wells and manifolds are located between 13 and 16 kilometres south of the FPSO.
The 120-meter long FPSO has been in production since 30 January 1999. It has a production capacity of 90,000 barrels a day.
The accompanying Apollo Spirit is an FSO vessel, moored via a submerged turret loading (STL) system. The vessel receives processed oil from the Petrojarl Banff via a flexible riser. Oil is stored in the vessel’s cargo tanks and periodically offloaded to shuttle tankers. It has nine cargo tanks, with a total capacity of 910,000 bbl.
The previous oil export route for the FPSO was a submerged anchor loading system, which was removed during 2019.
