EAST SPAR FIELD—FROM DISCOVERY TO SALES

Abstract

The East Spar field is located 40 km west of Barrow Island on the North West Shelf, offshore WA, and con­tains 23.6 G.m3 (834 Bscf) of proven and probable wet gas in-place in the Early Cretaceous Barrow Group. The trap is structural, but with negligible time closure.

At the time of the discovery and early appraisal of East Spar in late 1993, a rapid deregulation of the gas market was taking place. In combination with the concept of a gas pipeline to the central WA Goldfields region, a marketing 'window of opportunity' was created for the East Spar field, if the development could be crystallised in the available period of 9 months. This required ap­praisal drilling, geotechnical studies, reservoir engineer­ing and facilities engineering to be advanced on parallel fronts, with close co-ordination and communication be tween all disciplines.

The concept of an alliance between the East Spar Joint Venture and the engineering/construction contractors was identified as a way of retaining flexibility to alter the development concept during this period, and provide other benefits during the subsequent construction phase. This alliance was ultimately formed to include represen­tatives from WMC (on behalf of the East Spar Joint Venture (ESJV)), Kvaerner-R J Brown and dough Engi­neering.

The East Spar facilities will comprise a subsea comple­tion and gathering system, with all produced fluids being piped to processing facilities on Varanus Island. The treated gas will then be transported to the mainland via the existing sales gas pipeline to the onshore Dampier to Bunbury pipeline, which connects with the Goldfields Gas pipeline. The condensate will be exported from Varanus Island by tanker. First sales are expected in October 1996