North Sea

The deal comes months after the jointly owned Petrogas NEO UK acquired several UK North Sea assets, including a $635-million purchase of Total's stakes in various fields last July. The 2-year deal with Petrofac is valued around $50 million.

The deal is part of BP’s plan to divest $10 billion in the North Sea so that it can focus on developing core growth areas and construct more cost-effective subsea tiebacks in the region.

The company will shell out more than $800 million to acquire interests in the Andrew and Shearwater areas, as well as the Tolmount field, offshore Scotland.

The unmanned development is expected to add 80 million BOE of production to the aging Norwegian North Sea field. Aker BP said it aims to produce 1 billion BOE from Valhall over the next 40 years.

As part of the contract, Wood will provide the topside modifications needed for the Snorre A and Gullfaks A platforms to integrate the Hywind floating wind park with existing systems powering the facilities. The platforms will be the first to receive electric power from floating wind turbines.

Greenpeace has been banned from carrying out climate protests on North Sea oil rigs after the oil giant Shell won a Scottish court order.

Offshore wind makes up less than 1% of the current energy mix, but analysts have it pegged as a potential trillion-dollar business in the near future. That growth presents an opportunity for operators to reduce costs and their carbon footprint through the electrification of their offshore platforms.

A proving ground for the use of digital twins has emerged in the North Sea. There, operators Total, Aker BP, and Shell have each developed and deployed twins that they expect to pay big dividends.

The deal, first announced in May, gives the Delek subsidiary 10 additional producing field interests in the UK North Sea, boosting its 2019 production by 300%.

Equinor, the operator of the Johan Sverdrup field, said that Mongstad will receive more than 30% of the total oil from the Norwegian Continental Shelf when the field is operating at full capacity.