Norne Crude Oil Quality, Transport And Marketing
Authors: Thorvaidsen Tor Jan 
Published: October 2008

The Nome field is situated in the northern part of Norway and will start production of crude oil in spring 1997. Planned plateau production of this medium density crude is 170 thousand barrels pr day (kbd). After stabilization and water removal, crude will be tandem loaded from the monohull ship storage to standard North Sea buoy loaders with an average cargo size of 855 kb. The cargoes will either be delivered directly to the North West European market or reloaded at Statoil's crude oil terminal at Mongstad for re-export to the Mediterranean or US/Canadian market.(See Fig.no. 1 - Location of Nome Field In Europe)

INTRODUCTION

The Norne field is the third major crude oil project in the Haltenbanken area (Draugen 1994 and Heidrun 1995) and will rise total processing capacity in this region to above 0,5 million barrels pr day (mbd) and total Norwegian production capacity to above 3 mill barrels pr day (mbd) in 1997. In the same period UK sector is also expected to produce above 2,6 mbd of crude oil. This indicates a need for access to other markets than North West Europe (NWE) in the future.

This paper will therefore start with a general description of North Sea production developments and anticipated NWE demand for light sweet crude oil qualities. I ne paper compares historical production data, developments of crude oil transportation systems in the North sea, current production forecasts and NWE refinery demand for the period 1995-1998.

Evaluation of assay from test wells also indicates a good but different crude oil quality from what is normally found in the Norwegian sector. This quality issue also constitutes a marketing challenge for Norne.

Haltenbanken will with Norne produce three different qualities. Light density (API 42) crude oil low on sulphur from Draugen, sweet high density (API 27-29) naphthenic crude from Heidrun and medium density (API 33) Norne crude oil low on sulphur (0,2 Wt%). Evaluation of the supply/demand situation for crude to NWE and yields analyses must be done before transport systems and marketing strategies for this field can be developed.

NORTH WEST EUROPE (NWE) PRODUCTION AND DEMAND

UK and Norway dominate production of sweet light density crude oil qualities in Europe. Since 1985 there has been a steady increase in production from the Norwegian sector and from 1993 also a significant increase from the UK sector.

The British have until recently developed most of their crude oil fields by processing and exporting dry gas directly from field installations to the European gas market. Processed crude oils is pumped through transportpipelines to terminals for some removal of light ends (C4-) and further re-export (RVP &lt; 11) to NWE or other markets. After development of Ekofisk, new Norwegian fields (Statfjord and Gullfaks) were developed with wet gasdeliveries from offshore to stripping facilities at Karst for drying and re-export of dry gas to Europe. Fully processedcrude (RVP &lt; 11) is routed from last stage separator to huge concrete storage facilities for later buoy loading to NWE market in batches of 8-900 kb.