Harding oilfield

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The Harding oilfield is a small field operated by BP, in the mid North Sea, approximately 200 miles North-East of Aberdeen. It was discovered in 1987 with oil located in the Eocene, though the abundance of napthalmic acid made its oil unattractive at the time. Ten years later, changes in refining technology made the field viable as an investment. In order to keep capital expenditure low and due to the small nature of the field, a new build production platform was rejected as an option and instead BP opted to convert a jack-up drilling rig to a small production platform, based on the design of Technip Geoproduction. The option of a pipeline to export produced hydrocarbons was also mothballed and produced oil is stored in a 550,000 bbl gravity base tank for export by tanker. Without a pipeline, the bulk of the produced gas has been reinjected into the cap of the central reservoir, sequestering it for production after 2009, when the platform is converted to a gas producer after decline of oil production.

Harding presently produces around 25 mbd and 9mmscfd (9,000,000 scfd), most of which is re-injected. Production is presently supported by a mixture of gas lift and water and gas injection.