Repsol Restarts Yme Production After Repairing Leak

Spanish oil and gas giant Repsol has restarted production from its Yme field in the North Sea offshore Norway.

OKEA, Repsol’s partner in the field, said that the Yme field was shut in during the Easter holidays following the detection of a minor oil spill. Last week, OKEA was informed by Repsol’s Norwegian arm about the production being restarted.

According to the company, the source of the leak has been identified in a pipe between the wellhead platform and the subsea storage tank.

Production will temporarily go directly to the tanker vessel Bodil Knudsen. OKEA added that the storage capacity of the Bodil Knudsen is about 1 million barrels of oil. 

OKEA further stated that production from Yme is planned to ramp up to plateau production during the third quarter of 2022.

This is the second announced shutdown of the Yme field after the first occurred in November 2021, less than a month after the first oil. At the time, the field shutdown was done to assess the high oil in water readings.

The Yme field is in the Egersund Basin, some 85 miles from the Norwegian coastline. It was first brought on stream by Equinor back in 1996 only to be shut down in 2001 due to the low oil price environment, rendering it unprofitable at the time.

Repsol took over the project in 2015. In December 2017, Repsol submitted a revised PDO for the field, which was approved in March 2018.

The new development project for the field entailed the engineering, procurement, and installation of a new wellhead module on top of the existing facilities, the modifications and upgrading of the Maersk Inspirer mobile offshore drilling and production unit before installation in the field, and subsequent hook-up to existing wells in and installations on the seabed offshore.

Following years of delays, the Yme field started producing again in late October 2021. It was one of the first oil fields on the Norwegian shelf to be redeveloped after it was shut down.

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