Esmond, Forbes and Gordon are three adjacent, now depleted, natural gas fields in the southern North Sea, 170 km east of Teesside.

The fields

Esmond, Forbes and Gordon were the most northerly gas fields in the UK sector of the southern

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian S ...

: Esmond was in Block 43/13a, Forbes in Block 43/8a and Gordon in Blocks 43/15a and 43/20a. The fields were named after Scottish clans. The gas reservoirs are Lower

Triassic The Triassic ( ) is a geologic period and system which spans 50.6 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.36 Mya. The Triassic is the first and shortest period ...

Bunter

sandstones Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) b ...

at a depth of 4,470 to 5,755 feet (1,362 to 1,754 metres). The reservoir properties are:

Owner and operator

In 1985 the licensees were Hamilton Oil GB plc (48%), Hamilton Bros Petroleum (UK) Ltd (12%), RTZ Oil and Gas Ltd (25%), Blackfriars Oil Co Ltd (12.5&), and Trans-European Co. Ltd (2.5%). The operator was Hamilton Brothers Oil & Gas Ltd. Hamilton Bros remained the operator until BHP assumed operatorship prior to decommissioning in 1995.

Development

The three fields were individually uneconomic to develop. However, the development was viable if they were developed together. They were configured as a central processing complex (Esmond) and two unmanned satellites, Forbes and Gordon.

Production

Processing facilities on Esmond comprised gas/condensate/water separation, Tri-ethylene glycol (TEG) dehydration, and provision for 20,000 bhp of gas compression. Condensate was injected into the gas export line. Peak production from the three fields was: * Esmond 1.2 billion cubic metres per year (bcmy) (1986) * Forbes 0.5 bcmy (1986) * Gordon 0.4 bcmy (1986) By 1995 Esmond had produced around 8.5 x 10⁹ standard cubic metres. That was about 93% of the recoverable reserves in the reservoir.

Later developments

Decommissioning was approved in 1993-5; the Forbes platform was recovered to shore in 1993, the Esmond and Gordon installations were taken to a yard in the Netherlands for dismantling in 1995. The 24-inch Esmond to Bacton pipeline was known as the Esmond Transmission System (ETS). Following decommissioning of Esmond in 1995 the pipeline was reconfigured and reused to transport gas from Tyne and Trent fed by a 20-inch pipeline. The 37 km northerly part of the ETS was disconnected. The remainder was renamed EAGLES East Anglia Gas And Liquids Evacuation System Pipeline. Tyne production ceased in 2015. The

Cygnus gas field The Cygnus gas field is a natural gas reservoir and gas production facilities in the UK sector of the southern North Sea. It is about 150 km of east of the Lincolnshire coast and started gas production in 2016. The field The Cygnus field exten ...

has used the pipeline since 2016. There are proposals to use the Esmond reservoir for

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide (chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is transpar ...

storage.

References

{{reflist Natural gas fields in the United Kingdom North Sea energy