It's easy to spot a good neighbor in a community. He moves in, sets up a business, gets involved in community activities and soon becomes a part of the infrastructure that keeps the community healthy. He makes a profit from his activity and he gives time, expertise and money back to the town.

The oilpatch works the same way. The North Sea has a broad spectrum of operators, from early-entry majors who may be looking for bigger opportunities to newcomers that look for newer opportunities. At the core, the good neighbor keeps the community working.

"The North Sea is similar to other maturing basins in the world. What we generally see is that early in the life of a new basin the major oil companies tend to dominate; as the basin matures and the materiality of incremental business falls, the independent oil companies take over more of the business which remains material to the independents," said Nigel Hares, executive vice president, frontier and international operations for Talisman Energy in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

That strategy has made Talisman the leading independent operator in the North Sea as it concentrated on commercial hubs; low-risk development; exploration opportunities near existing fields; and third-party tariffs on platforms, pipelines and its terminal on Flotta Island in the Orkney Islands off the northern tip of Scotland. It ranks 10th in size of production and reserves.

That was the picture as the company celebrated its 10th anniversary in the North Sea on Aug. 26, 2004, and saw its production grow from 30,000 boe/d in 1995 to more than 140,000 boe/d.

The Flotta terminal hosts tankers from BP's Foinaven field west of the Shetland Islands and handles most of Talisman's production off the Moray Firth.

Production comes to the terminal from Talisman's Claymore and Piper B platforms and fields, and from Tartan, Saltire, Galley, Renee and Rubie fields. It also handles oil from the Amerada Hess Hamish, Ivanhoe and Rob Roy fields and ConocoPhillips' McCulloch complex.

The company's Ross/Blake complex produces back through the Bleo Holm floating production, storage and offloading vessel, and the Clyde platform hosts tiebacks from Medwin, Leven, Orion and Nethan fields. The Buchan A semisubmersible also handles tieback production from Hannay.

Roots in a solid infrastructure don't mean the company is just picking off declining production from mature fields. During the first quarter, it drilled a development well at Galley for 1,700 b/d, another at Claymore for 4,700 b/d, another at Gyda, on the Norwegian side, for 3,000 b/d, and it's testing an apparent success at Tartan.

Talisman has committed US $562 million (Cdn $700 million) to a major program to develop Tweedsmuir and Tweedsmuir South about 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Aberdeen. The fields, which contain an estimated 70 million boe, will be developed as a four-well tieback to the Piper B platform 35 miles (55 km) to the north for relay to Flotta. Use of existing infrastructure helps minimize costs and reduces time to sanction and production.

It also bought a 70% interest in the Varg oil field offshore Norway with 10,000 boe/d of production. The purchase included the undeveloped Varg South condensate field and potential exploration acreage.
Perhaps its most ambitious project doesn't directly involve oil and gas. It owns Beatrice field in the Moray Firth some 16 miles (25 km) off the Scottish coast. That will serve as the base for its Distant Offshore Wind farms with No Visual Impact in Deepwater (DOWNVIND) project.
The first step will be a $45.4-million first phase to install two 5 MW turbines in 137 ft (42 m) of water with first power production late in 2006.

The project will test the feasibility of a full-scale wind farm with 200 wind turbines that will produce 1 GW of power, or 20% of Scotland's demand.

With these kinds of projects, the North Sea will remain a key oilpatch province for many years.

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