News Clicky

Hmmm. I was out in the Elgin/Franklin field a few days ago.
That footage is out of date and shows the Elgin Platform and Rowan Gorilla 5 (my rig).
In fact the Rowan Viking is next to the Elgin now and the Gorilla 5 is about two miles away.

This could be a major problem for Total. The Elgin field is classified as ultra high pressure/high temperature. If there's a subsea leak then could that de difficult and time consuming to fix.
How will this affect others? The Elgin platform produces gas and condensate from the Elgin and Frankin fields (West Franklin is being drilled by the Gorilla 5 now, but isn't online yet) and due to the nature of these wells, that one platform produces about a quarter of teh UK's domestic gas supply all by itself. If they've had to shut it down then that has the potential to have a massive effect on the wholesale gas price. We're just lucky to be in a warm spell at the moment.

Yesterday they reported most people were evacuated to Aberdeen, but some to near by rigs. I'd expect the Gorilla 5 to have taken some of them. It's the nearest rig, it's owned by the same company that owns the Viking and it's drilling for Total too.

I'm going to give the Gorilla 5 a ring today to see how this has affected them. They were due to enter the reservoir on the well they are drilling in the next few days. On saturdays they were just pulling out to do some BOP tests before running back in and drilling into the reservoir.
If I get any gossip I'll let you know.

Just spoken to the Gorilla 5.
Total have decided to plug and abandon the well they were working on. They're probably going move closer to the Elgin after they've backloaded all the reservoir equipment and chemicals, then start drilling a relief well.
The problem is that wells in that field take ages to drill.
So I'll be part of that effort when I head back there in two and a half weeks.

EDIT

It could take six months News Click
Easily. Possible more.

On the bright side it means more work for people

The first thing I thought of when I heard this was to ask you about it.

I knew you weren't out on a rig as I saw a post saying you had just come back.

Obviously this is not a good thing and it must be a big problem to reach the news and evacuate etc... but do problems like this (not of this magnitude) happen regularly or is the normal to not have any problems at all?

Depends
How long are both the Elgina and Viking going to be downmanned.
This isn't going to be like the Deepwater Horizon where loads of rigs are brought in to drill wells. There's not many rigs in the North Sea that can drill HTHP wells to those sort of depths. They're easily the deepest (not longest) that I've drilled.

French papers headlining today that you got a leak that might take 6 months to sort out. It also says that it's a no fly, no sail zone for the moment

Well just to give you an idea. The next well we had penned in for drilling in that field was due to last 220 days.

I see the BBC have finally got a photo of the right rigs on their news website.
The photo's they've been using before now were wrong as a different jack-up was along side.

I've just seen the Energy Minister's comments regarding production rates from the Elgin. Either he's 'slightly' misinformed or he just doen't want people to think it's a bid deal.

Hmmm. Just spoke to the engineer on the Viking when it was evacuated. It seems a few of the things said on the news aren't exactly 'accurate'.

Rig Manager -> HQ-> PR Dept. -> Media -> General populace = BS
Engineer -> Lev -> x404 = ........

Well I've just been sent a very rough proposal on how we'll be killing it (or starting to) when I go back out to the RG5 next week.
Sounds like the RG5 and Sedco704 will be drilling relief wells. They may well bring in the West Phoenix too as the 704 is very old and doesn't really have the capacity to drill these deep HTHP wells.

I guess the number of rigs sent to drill relief wells is a good indication of the scale of the problem.

Scale of the problem 'disaster' wise, probably.
Scale of the problem 'loss of revenue while the Elgin is shut down', most certainly.