Since the Greater Kittiwake Area (GKA) asset in the UK North Sea was acquired from Shell in 2003, Petrofac has been helping its new owners to unlock the value of the asset and maximise production.
In early 2014 EnQuest cemented its position in the Central North Sea with the acquisition of Kittiwake and extended our Duty Holder contract for an additional 12 months.
Demonstrating our experience and ability in delivering Duty Holder and engineering management responsibilities, as well as construction services, we have supplied and managed a wide range of work scopes and enabled sizeable production improvements on the Kittiwake asset during our 11 year history on the platform.
We’ve now managed two transitions on Kittiwake; the first in 2003 when Centrica Energy bought the asset from Shell UK and more recently in March 2014 when EnQuest bought the asset.  In that time, in our role as Duty Holder and through the provision of engineering management, we have overcome significant operational and engineering challenges to deliver valuable improvements on the asset: increasing production, reducing backlog maintenance and improving safety performance.
In our role as Duty Holder for Kittiwake and through the provision of engineering management, we have overcome significant operational and engineering challenges to deliver valuable improvements on platform.
Production efficiencies have been driven partly by modifications to the platform, including changes in the crude oil export system from tanker offloading systems to direct oil export. We also introduced operational performance targets to enhance production.
Key achievements:
in a period of four years, in line with Centrica’s investment in the asset, we increased production by more than 50% and at peak in 2009 the asset was producing around 25,000 bopd – the highest annual production level in 13 years.  Maintenance backlog has been reduced by 90% from an average of 1,500 hours to 200 hours; another record
most importantly, safety and asset integrity performance on Kittiwake has shown considerable improvement with reductions in operational risk assessments, remedial action registers and process plant over-rides. These achievements are attributed to Petrofac’s strong operational competencies in this area and our Group asset integrity review board which keeps issues of asset integrity high on the agenda
Kittiwake’s success would not have been achieved without the continual investment from its owners in both field development and ongoing asset integrity. We’re delighted to be continuing our relationship with the Kittiwake asset under the guidance of new owners EnQuest, and hope we can play our part in supporting future developments on the GKA.