Eider oilfield

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The Eider Oilfield is situated 184 km north east of Lerwick, Shetland Islands, Scotland, in block numbers 211/16a & 211/21a. It is operated by Royal Dutch Shell and licensed by Shell/Esso. It was discovered in May 1976 in a water depth of 157.5 metres. Estimated recovery is 85 million barrels of oil.

The production is via the Cormorant Alpha platform to the Brent System pipeline.

Eider Alpha has gone through a succession of changes in its lifetime, It's original concept was to be operated via the North Cormorant Platform and remain Unmanned. However between Concept and the eventual design it was quickly realised that the unmanned concept was unrealistic. However with the low oil price during the end of the 90s and the beginning of the 00s, it was relatively uneconomic in the fact it could not attract investment from the Shell group. A programme of change was undertaken with the implicit contribution of the workforce onboard at the time. This change meant the Manning of the installation reduced from 35-40 down to 6-7 depending on the workloads, with additional manning when Annual Shutdowns occurred. Although this change was deemed successful, there were a lot of gaps. However the success of minimising OPEX attracted TOTALFINAELF to tie its Otter Subsea Field back to the Platform. This consisted of three production wells assisted by dual ESPs was a World First. After production of Otter started up in October 2002, thoughts were once again looking at heading back to minimum manning after the Commissioning teams left. The Minimum manning team was led by Dave Thain, after an indepth GAP analysis was undertaken, the team went into full flow and within a few months a new regime had started on the Asset. After a few minor teething issues and a change out of some personnel, Eider finally made it and became the most profitable platform of the 5 Northern Assets in Shells Portfolio.

Unfortunately all this work has been undone by Shells "Gurus" and the Asset is currently being sold along with its workforce as Shell gets clear of the North Sea.