Britannia Topsides : A Safe and Productive North Sea Facility at Lowest Cost
Authors: Garga P.K. 
Published: October 2008

In the development of large North Sea platform facilities, the services of key contractors has, in the past, been brought in using conventional contracting procedures, achieving a mixed set of results. A step change reduction in Capex and Opex, without compromising on safety and operability, has been achieved on the Britannia topside facilities through the adoption of alliance contracting and execution principles. The outstanding results achieved were a function not only of the specific alliance contract framework adopted, but also the innovative and mould-breaking approach used to create trust and alignment to common goals, under which the combined client and contractor team could expose and implement best/efficient working practices.

Introduction

Britannia is a large gas-condensate field located in the central area of the UK North Sea. The details of the reservoir, chosen development option, and description of the main elements of the offshore facilities can be found in another OTC Paper No. 11013, (Ref. 1) presented at the 1999 OTC Conference.

The development of a large, offshore gas-condensate field in the UK North Sea, presents many challenges to the owners, contractors and suppliers engaged in that venture. Common with other regions of the world, the prevailing climate of low oil and gas product prices requires the development to achieve least Capex and Opex while at the same time achieve the highest levels of safety and plant reliability/uptime. Very often the two sets of objectives of low Capex and Opex, and high safety and reliability end up competing against each other, particularly in the harsh environment of the North Sea.

Previous benchmarks for similar large developments in the North Sea up to 1994, indicated that the requisite levels of offshore plant safety and reliability could be met but at capital cost levels that would lead to an uneconomic development of the Britannia field, coming on-stream in 1998. Fig. 1 shows the capital cost of five large topside platform facilities, completed up to 1994 in pounds sterling (£) per tonne(te) of dry weight of topsides. (The facilities chosen all have dry weights in excess of 15,000 tonnes, are of multi-module configuration and represent the correct comparison against the 19,400 tonne dry weight Britannia topside facility). Up to 1994, the average cost of topside facilities was £30,000 / te with a 'best-in-class' of £26,000 / te. The challenge for the Britannia development team was to produce a topside facility located in the central North Sea, at a capital cost some 20% below the 'best-in-class' result achieved till 1994, without compromising on safety and reliability standards.

The problem of how to achieve a significant reduction in costs of offshore projects has taxed the minds of all operators, contractors and service providers operating in the North Sea. Their deliberations and conclusions were presented in the 'CRINE' report in 1994, Ref. 2. Amongst its many useful analyses of past problems, it noted that the UK offshore industry, at all levels, was beset with mistrust and misunderstanding of each other's motives. It recommended a shift from the confrontational basis of project management/execution to a co-operative basis of contracting and project management, referred to as 'alliance contracting'. In 1994, alliancing was in its infancy in offshore developments and had not been applied to a large project of the scale of the Britannia development. The adoption and execution of alliance forms of contracting and project execution were seen by the Britannia project team as the means to deliver a low Capex / Opex topside facility while meeting the high standards of safety and reliability.