Britannia Topsides: A Low Cost, Safe and Productive North Sea Facility
Authors: Croft-Bednarski Stefan , Johnston Kerr 
Published: October 2008

Britannia Operator Limited (BOL), a joint venture between Conoco and Chevron was formed in November 1994 to develop and operate the Britannia field in the North Sea.

Developing an oil and gas field in an economic climate of uncertain oil and gas prices is a challenge to any organisation. Achieving this under the banner of a new joint venture between two oil companies, provided an opportunity to succeed. However, the project was approved and started in 1994. The challenge had been to design, build and commission the facility at the lowest possible capital expenditure (capex) cost. With a potential field life of 30 years, focus was also required on minimising the potential life of field operational expenditure (opex) costs. To achieve this, a step change in thinking was required and thus operations people were integrated very early into the project to work alongside the design team so that their practical operating experiences for maintainability and operability could be incorporated into the design. Operational input continued through the hook up and commissioning phases and into operations.

Later, in parallel with this effort, a new onshore support organisation was formed. The strategy was simple; support a single facility, at the lowest cost with minimum people giving high reliability and operational flexibility to maximise value, without compromising safety. The practicalities of achieving this were far from easy.

Introduction

The Britannia gas and condensate field is located in the UK Sector of the Central North Sea, 210 km (130 miles) north east of Aberdeen and covers an area approximately 112 square kilometers (70 square miles) as shown in Fig.1. Further details of the reservoir, the selected development option and details of the facilities are described in OTC paper No 11013, (Ref 1), presented at the 1999 OTC Conference.

The concept of a joint venture between two independent major oil companies for developing and operating an offshore facility is unique in the North Sea. A further principle was that BOL would not have any employees, personnel would be seconded from either of the parent companies or from major support alliance contractors. The organisational vision was that a nucleus of Conoco and Chevron people would populate BOL with sufficient management and core competencies to fulfil the aims of Britannia. A key element for success was the formation of an integrated team approach between contractors, Conoco and Chevron.

Furthermore, in the aggressive pursuit of superior performance it was identified that integrating operations personnel into the project at an early stage would add a new dimension, ensuring that the best of both construction and operations innovations could be incorporated into the design. To accomplish this, the Operations Group was stablished at an early stage and a nucleus of people in key positions were placed throughout the project organisation. Their challenge was to successfully achieve lowest costs for the facilities both in the development (capex) and production (opex) phases.

BOL developed a Vision which was to be the "Best in Class regional operator by the year 2000". To achieve this an effective onshore operations support organisation had to be formed. Again it was identified that to exceed or even meet the aims, a step change in ideas, innovations and understanding was required. BOL having autonomy from their respective parent companies, allowed further opportunities to identify industry best practices, processes and procedures rather than automatically take existing company systems, which were not necessarily "Best for Britannia".