The Miller oilfield is a deep reservoir under the

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 ...

, 240 kilometres north-east of

Peterhead Peterhead (; gd, Ceann Phàdraig, sco, Peterheid ) is a town in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It is Aberdeenshire's biggest settlement (the city of Aberdeen itself not being a part of the district), with a population of 18,537 at the 2011 Census. ...

in UKCS Blocks 16/7b and 16/8b. It was discovered in 1983 by BP in a water depth of 100 metres. Production from Miller field started in June 1992, and plateau production was from late 1992 to 1997 at rates of up to of oil and of gas per day at

standard conditions Standard temperature and pressure (STP) are standard sets of conditions for experimental measurements to be established to allow comparisons to be made between different sets of data. The most used standards are those of the International Union ...

. Miller produced some of oil during its lifetime. The field is named after

Hugh Miller Hugh Miller (10 October 1802 – 23/24 December 1856) was a self-taught Scottish geologist and writer, folklorist and an evangelical Christian. Life and work Miller was born in Cromarty, the first of three children of Harriet Wright (''b ...

who contributed to Scottish geology in the early nineteenth century. The Miller field reached the end of its economic oil and gas producing life in 2007 when Cessation of Production (CoP) approval was received from the UK government. Preparations are currently under way to decommission the Miller platform, but the oil and gas pipelines will be preserved for future opportunities. On 1 April 2009, sixteen people were killed in the crash of a helicopter carrying workers from the Miller field back to Aberdeen.

Geology

The reservoir consists of Upper

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of ...

Brae Formation

turbidite A turbidite is the geologic deposit of a turbidity current, which is a type of amalgamation of fluidal and sediment gravity flow responsible for distributing vast amounts of clastic sediment into the deep ocean. Sequencing Turbidites wer ...

s, 2 km deep, in the South Viking

graben In geology, a graben () is a depressed block of the crust of a planet or moon, bordered by parallel normal faults. Etymology ''Graben'' is a loan word from German, meaning 'ditch' or 'trench'. The word was first used in the geologic conte ...

. The

Kimmeridge Clay The Kimmeridge Clay is a sedimentary deposit of fossiliferous marine clay which is of Late Jurassic to lowermost Cretaceous age and occurs in southern and eastern England and in the North Sea. This rock formation is the major source rock for Nor ...

Formation is the source rock.

Reservoir

The Miller reservoir is located at a depth of below sea level, it has an estimated area of and a maximum thickness of . Reservoir pressure is and reservoir temperature is 121°C. The oil has a gravity of 39°API and a sulphur content of 0.40%. As of 1999, BP estimated the total recoverable reserves from the field to be of oil and of natural gas. Total

oil in place Oil in place (OIP) (not to be confused with original oil-in-place (OOIP)) is a specialist term in petroleum geology that refers to the total oil content of an oil reservoir. As this quantity cannot be measured directly, it has to be estimated fr ...

for the reservoir is .

Development

The Miller platform was built by Highlands Fabricators in Nigg Bay, it was installed in July 1991. Its first year of peak production was 1993 when it produced 5.9 million tonnes per year.

Export pipelines

Gas export from Miller was via a sour gas pipeline system (Miller Gas System) comprising a 241 km, sealine to St Fergus and then on via a 17.5 km landline to Peterhead Power Station. Miller oil was pumped via a 7.5 km-long, export pipeline to the Brae A platform and then onwards via the Forties pipeline system to the mainland. In 2003, BP constructed a new 8.5 km, gas pipeline between the Brae B and Miller platforms to allow gas to be exported from Brae to Miller for use in the Miller Field EOR (

Enhanced oil recovery Enhanced oil recovery (abbreviated EOR), also called tertiary recovery, is the extraction of crude oil from an oil field that cannot be extracted otherwise. EOR can extract 30% to 60% or more of a reservoir's oil, compared to 20% to 40% using ...

) scheme.

Decommissioning

Formal cessation of production for the Miller field was approved by the DECC in September 2007. In 2009, BP estimated the gross cost of decommissioning the field to be of the order of £300 million. The initial phase of decommissioning activities involving well abandonment and topsides cleanup were completed by the end of 2009. The oil and gas export pipelines have been flushed clear of hydrocarbons and are being left in place for potential future use. The Miller platform topside and jacket will remain in place for several years while detailed plans for their removal are developed. The Jigsaw search and rescue helicopter will remain on the Miller platform during this period with minimum staffing to continue to support search and rescue operations.

Carbon sequestration

BP developed plans to reuse the structure for deep

carbon sequestration Carbon sequestration is the process of storing carbon in a carbon pool. Carbon dioxide () is naturally captured from the atmosphere through biological, chemical, and physical processes. These changes can be accelerated through changes in lan ...

."BP And Partners Plan Clean Energy Plant in Scotland, Increasing Oil Recovery And Reducing Emissions"
20 June 2005 (press release)

References

{{reflist Oil fields of Scotland