THE start of production from the giant Mariner oil field East of Shetland has been delayed following complications with the project.
The oil giant leading the development, Equinor, said the expected start up of the 300 million barrel field had been pushed back to the second half of this year from the first half.
A spokesperson for the Norwegian group said: “For safety reasons we have decided to recheck all the electrical connections on Mariner, that is around 40 000 checkpoints all over the topside. If we get the desired progress in this work … we are targeting start up during the summer.”
Reuters reported that Equinor’s vice president for major projects, Morten Ruth, had said initial tests showed the couplings’ failure rate was too high. “They (electrical couplings) can lead to an explosion if gas gets to the platform,” he said.
Formerly called Statoil, Equinor originally planned to start production from Mariner in 2017.
Budgeted to cost around £4.5 billion to develop, Mariner is one of the biggest projects undertaken on the United Kingdom Continental Shelf in recent years
When the Mariner platform was put in place in 2017 around 90 miles East of Shetland, Equinor said the field was expected to be in production for 30 years.
Around 800 people are working on the project offshore.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel