United Kingdom Oil and Gas Fields: 50th Anniversary Commemorative Volume

Geological Society Memoir 52 records the extraordinary journey of more than 50 years that has led to the development of some 458 oil and gas fields on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS). It contains papers on almost 150 onshore and offshore fields in all of the UK's main petroliferous basins. These papers range from look-backs on some of the first-developed gas fields in the Southern North Sea, to papers on fields that have only just been brought into production or may still remain undeveloped, and includes two candidate CO2 sequestration projects.
These papers are intended to provide a consistent summary of the exploration, appraisal, development and production history of each field, leading to the current subsurface understanding which is described in greater detail. As such, the Memoir will be an enduring reference source for those exploring for, developing, producing hydrocarbons and sequestering CO2 on the UKCS in the coming decades. It encapsulates the petroleum industry's deep subsurface knowledge accrued over more than 50 years of exploration and production.
The Forties Field, Blocks 21/10 and 22/6a, UK North Sea
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Published:October 30, 2020
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CiteCitation
P. T. S. Rose, G. W. Byerley, E. College, J. R. Pyle, D. J. Ralph, P. S. Rowbotham, L. A. van Oorschot, J. Towart, O. Vaughan, M. Vermaas, 2020. "The Forties Field, Blocks 21/10 and 22/6a, UK North Sea", United Kingdom Oil and Gas Fields: 50th Anniversary Commemorative Volume, G. Goffey, J. G. Gluyas
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Abstract
The Forties Field, discovered by BP in 1970, is the largest oilfield on the UK Continental Shelf. It is trapped in a simple four-way dip closure, with a Paleocene turbidite sandstone reservoir. The Forties Field originally contained between 4.2 and 5 billion bbl of oil, with 2.75 billion bbl produced to June 2017. Production has been supported by water injection and the influx of a regional aquifer. The original development contained equally spaced producers with peripheral injectors. As the field matured, production was concentrated in the crestal parts of the field with injectors tending to be moved upflank. With the development of seismic lithology prediction and fluid detection, together with 4D seismic technology, it became possible in the late 1990s to target bypassed oil in unexpected locations throughout the field. In 2003, BP sold the field to Apache who were able to rejuvenate production, adding over 170 MMbbl oil reserves, with an extended drilling campaign targeting bypassed pay identified using seismic technologies. Production at the Forties facility has been further enhanced by the development of four satellite oilfields, Bacchus (Jurassic reservoir), Brimmond, Maule and Tonto (Eocene reservoirs), together with Aviat (Pleistocene reservoir) produced for fuel gas supply.
- Atlantic Ocean
- Cenozoic
- clastic rocks
- continental shelf
- correlation
- data integration
- development
- drilling
- Eocene
- Europe
- Forties Field
- geophysical methods
- giant fields
- history
- Jurassic
- lithostratigraphy
- Mesozoic
- natural gas
- North Atlantic
- North Sea
- oil and gas fields
- Paleogene
- petroleum
- petroleum exploration
- production
- reserves
- reservoir rocks
- sandstone
- sedimentary rocks
- seismic methods
- Tertiary
- United Kingdom
- Western Europe
- Maule Field
- Brimmond Field
- Bacchus Field
- Aviat Field
- Tonto Field
- satellite fields