Woodside full steam ahead for next phase of Western Flank project
The national regulator has approved Woodside’s plans for the next stage of the Western Flank development on the North West Shelf (NWS) offshore Western Australia.
The company plans to drill three production wells at the Greater Western Flank-3 (GWF-3) development and one development well at the Lambert Deep (LD) development.
The NWS is a joint venture between six major international companies, including Woodside, BHP, BP, Chevron Australia, Japan Australia LNG and Shell Australia.
The GWF-3 and the LD gas project targets estimated recoverable gas reserves of 400 billion cubic feet (bcf), and involve the drilling and subsea tieback of new production wells to the existing infrastructure of the NWS project.
The gas project is being developed to support the production of the NWS project that has been producing since 1984 and currently delivers one-third of Australia’s oil and gas production.
Woodside had advised that it intends to tie-in the wells back to the Goodwyn Alpha (GWA) and Angel platforms.
The Angel platform is located about 120km north-west of Karratha and is connected to the North Rankin Complex (NRC) via a 50km subsea pipeline.
In addition, the Goodwyn platform is connected to the condensate-rich Goodwyn gas field, located 23km south-west of the North Rankin A platform and about 135km north-west of Karratha.
Between 2015 and 2018, Woodside implemented the Greater Western Flank project, connecting an additional eight fields to the Goodwyn platform using subsea tie-backs.
Outlined in its environment plan to the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA), Woodside advised that the petroleum activities program will be carried out using a moored semi-submersible MODU, pipelay vessel, installation vessels and a variety of support vessels.
The project is set to commence in the second quarter of 2021 and be completed in 2023, with the program located in production licences WA-5-L (GWF-3), WA-16-L and WA-3-L (LD), 128km north-north-west of Dampier.