Total has resumed production on the Elgin/Franklin area, following the approval of the safety case by the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Production resumes gradually and should soon reach close to 70,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d; approximately 30,000 boe/d in Total’s share), that is to say 50% of the production potential from the fields. In order to recover by 2015 the production level which existed before the Elgin incident, a redevelopment project envisaging drilling of new infill wells on Elgin and Franklin is currently under study. In addition, the West Franklin Phase II development project remains ongoing with production start-up scheduled for 2014.
Production from the Elgin/Franklin area, which includes the Elgin, Franklin, West Franklin and Glenelg fields, totalled over 700 Mboe at the end of 2012. The remaining reserves are in excess of 500 Mboe and were not impacted by the Elgin incident. Production was stopped since late March 2012 when a gas leak caused by a combination of several unprecedented events occurred on the G4 well shut-in several months before.