Newly formed Quadrant Energy to decommission East Spar buoy

One of the first intentions of newly formed Quadrant Energy Pty. Ltd., Perth, is to remove the East Spar field navigation, communication, and control buoy, thus ending an era in remote offshore site operations.

Quadrant Energy was established on June 5 to manage the former assets of Apache Energy, which was sold to Brookfield Asset Management of Canada and Macquarie Capital for $2.1 billion (OGJ Online, June 5, 2015).

The buoy, hailed as a world first when deployed in the 1990s, was designed by Norwegian group Kvaerner as a cost-effective completion solution for remote locations.

Resembling a mini tension-leg platform, the buoy was connected by wire tendons to a gravity base on the seabed in 95 m of water.

It provided radio telemetry equipment, power to run the subsurface East Spar production system, along with pumps, storage tanks, chemical injection system, and corrosion and glycol inhibitors. The spar was stable and capable of riding out cyclones.

East Spar field, discovered in 1993 with reserves of 12.5 billion cu m of gas and 28 million bbl of condensate, was brought on stream in late 1996. The field was depleted and production suspended in 2006.

No longer required, the buoy will be decommissioned late this year and removed in 2016.

Western Australian gas assets include the Varanus Island hub, and the Devil Creek and Macedon gas plants. Oil interests include Pyrenees, Stag, Van Gogh, and Coniston fields.

Quadrant has taken over planning of the Roc-1 exploration well to be drilled near Apache’s Phoenix South-1 oil discovery in the offshore Canning basin late last year.

Some 400 former Apache employees transferred to Quadrant along with 300 contractors.