Norway's Statoil said Friday it had recently selected subsea compression as the preferred concept for further development of the Gullfaks field offshore Norway.
The new technology of using compressors--common in onshore pipelines--on the seabed could raise the recovery rate for the reserves.
Statoil said that it had been working with Framo Engineering since 2008 to develop technology for compressing wet gas on the seabed and had now decided to take the concept a step further on the Gullfaks South subsea field.
"This could increase production from the field by three billion cubic meters of gas, which means a 6% increase in recovery," said Ivar Aasheim, head of field development on the Norwegian shelf.
The current field recovery rate is 62%. Statoil says that combining subsea compression and conventional low pressure production in the later phases could lift the recovery rate to 74%.
Compression enables production to continue after the natural pressure in a reservoir has declined. The normal solution is compression on a platform or on land, but the closer the compressor is to the well, the more gas can be extracted.
Statoil said as well as at Gullfaks, there were subsea compression projects in the early stages for the Asgard field and for Ormen Lange, where it is working in cooperation with the operator, Shell.
But Gullfaks will be compressing wet gas, whereas the Asgard and Ormen Lange projects involve removing the moisture from the gas before compressing it on the seabed.
