Maersk Drilling secures contract for UK’s largest oil field

Maersk Drilling has been awarded a contract by Nexen Petroleum UK Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CNOOC Limited, for the drilling of three wells and options for nine additional wells at UK’s largest producing oil field, the Buzzard field in the Central North Sea.

The drilling campaign is for the Buzzard Phase II Development Project and is planned to commence around July 2018. The estimated duration of the initial firm contract period is 225 days.

The drilling campaign will be carried out by one of Maersk Drilling’s I-class jack-ups currently operating in Norway. The I-class jack-ups are of a CJ70 design and are the world’s largest jack-up rigs, the company claims.

    “By planning and executing work in close alignment with customers we are able to unlock the full performance potential of these large offline capable jack-ups,” says Lars Ostergaard, Chief Commercial Officer of Maersk Drilling.

It remains to be decided which of the I-class jack-up rigs Maersk Drilling will be utilizing for the campaign at the Buzzard field. This will be decided in November 2017.

The Buzzard field is located in the Outer Moray Firth, central North Sea, 96km north-east of Aberdeen, and 55km off Peterhead. The field is operated by Nexen with 43.2% and with Suncor Energy UK Ltd. (29.9%), BG Global Energy Ltd (21.7%) and Dyas EOG Limited (4.7%) and Oranje-Nassau Energy Petroleum Ltd (0.5%) also holding interests in the field and its facilities.