The Piper oilfield is a substantial

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

oilfield A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. Such reservoirs form when kerogen (ancient plant matter) is created in surrounding rock by the presence ...

covering 30.1 km² (11½ sq. mi.). It lies roughly halfway between

Aberdeen Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), and ...

and

Bergen Bergen (), historically Bjørgvin, is a city and municipality in Vestland county on the west coast of Norway. , its population is roughly 285,900. Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway. The municipality covers and is on the peninsula o ...

, at the eastern end of the Moray Firth basin.Maher, C.E., Piper Oil Field, in Giant Oil and Gas Fields of the Decade:1968-1978, AAPG Memoir 30, Halbouty, M.T., editor, Tulsa:American Association of Petroleum Geologists, , pp. 131-133 Oil extracted from it is piped to

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

, where it is stabilised at an oil plant on the island of

Flotta Flotta () is a small island in Orkney, Scotland, lying in Scapa Flow. The island is known for its large oil terminal and is linked by Orkney Ferries to Houton on the Orkney Mainland, Lyness on Hoy and Longhope on South Walls. The island has ...

, in the Orkney

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Arc ...

, while gas is shipped via the Frigg gas pipeline. In June 1975, the ''

Piper Alpha Piper Alpha was an oil platform located in the North Sea approximately north-east of Aberdeen, Scotland. It was operated by Occidental Petroleum (Caledonia) Limited (OPCAL) and began production in 1976, initially as an oil-only platform but la ...

'' oil platform was placed over the field in 144 metres (79 fathoms) of water, secured in place by 24 piles extending 116 metres (63 fathoms) beneath the seabed. The platform was designed for simultaneous drilling and production.

was the site of one of the world's worst oil platform disasters when it was destroyed by an explosion in 1988, with the loss of 167 lives. Piper Bravo was installed in 1992.

Talisman Energy Talisman Energy Inc. was a Canadian independent petroleum company that existed between 1993 and 2015. The company was created from the assets of BP Canada after British Petroleum divested its 57 percent stake in June 1992. It was one of Canada ...

acquired a controlling interest in 2000. Occidental Petroleum Corp., Getty Oil (Britain) Ltd., Thomson North Sea Ltd., and Allied Chemical (North Sea) Ltd., that later transformed into the OPCAL joint venture, obtained an oil exploration licence in 1972 and discovered the Piper oilfield in early 1973 after seismically mapping the area. Oil production started in 1976 with about increasing to . A gas recovery module was installed by 1980. Production declined to by 1988. OPCAL built the

oil terminal in the Orkney Islands to receive and process oil from the Piper, Claymore and Tartan fields, each with its own platform. A diameter main oil pipeline ran from ''Piper Alpha'' to Flotta, with a short oil pipeline from the Claymore platform joining it some to the west. The Tartan field also fed oil to Claymore and then onto the main line to Flotta. Separate 46 cm (18") diameter gas pipelines run from Piper to the Tartan platform, and from Piper to the gas compressing platform MCP-01 some to the northwest.

Geology

The field consists of three folded, tilted blocks on the northern edge of the Witch Ground Graben. Production is from the Upper Jurassic Piper Sandstone, a sandstone shelf with a thickness up to 142 metres (465') and

Oil-water contact In the hydrocarbon industry water contact is the elevation above which fluids other than water can be found in the pores of a rock. For example, in a traditional hand-excavated water well, the level at which the water stabilizes represents the wa ...

ranging in depths from 2195 to 2804 metres (7201' to 9200') under the sea. Piper oil most likely originated in the Kimmeridge Shale.Maher, C.E., Piper Oil Field, in Giant Oil and Gas Fields of the Decade:1968-1978, AAPG Memoir 30, Halbouty, M.T., editor, Tulsa:American Association of Petroleum Geologists, , p. 159

References

{{Reflist

External links

Piper Alpha: Lessons Learnt, 2008

Talisman's Piper 'B' Platform
North Sea oil fields Oil fields of Scotland

Geology

See also

References

External links