Neptune Energy has conducted the world’s first dual drilling operation from an integrated subsea template structure at the Fenja field in the Norwegian North Sea on May 13.

In conjunction with the start-up of the Fenja drilling campaign last month, Neptune teams maximized the full capabilities of Seadrill’s West Phoenix drilling rig to drill two wellbores at the same time.

While many drilling rigs are equipped with dual drilling capabilities, this was the first time dual drilling has been executed from an integrated subsea template structure. This accelerated the drilling operations, reduced costs and lowered operational emissions.

“Several drilling rigs have two drilling facilities where these traditionally support one another. However, in the instance of our operations we decided to use these facilities independently to concurrently drill two wellbores,” Thor Andre Løvoll, Neptune’s director of drilling and wells in Norway, said.

“The experience of dual drilling on Fenja has been positive and could see this method adopted as a more standard practice in the future. The current challenges in the market encourage us to re-think the way we do things safely, efficiently and with lower carbon emissions.”

Neptune recently conducted dual drilling operations on an exploration well on the Norwegian Continental Shelf and the experience was applied towards the Fenja subsea field development with great success.

Fenja is Neptune’s first operated development project on the Norwegian Shelf and is estimated to contain 97 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe). Fenja will deliver around 40,000 boe per day at plateau.

Located in the Norwegian Sea 120 km north-west of Kristiansund at a water depth of 320 m, the subsea field will be developed as a tie-back to the Njord-A platform. At 36 km, it will be the world’s longest electrically trace-heated pipe-in-pipe subsea development.

Offshore