White Rose blooms: FPSO vessel arrives at Newfoundland after covering 14,000 nautical miles from South Korea

Gary Park

Petroleum News Calgary correspondent

Husky Energy is on track to launch the C$2 billion White Rose field, Newfoundland’s third producing offshore project, within about two years.

The latest success came April 6 with the arrival in Canadian waters of the massive SeaRose floating production, storage and offloading vessel after a 14,000-nautical mile, eight-week journey from South Korea via Cape of Good Hope and across the Atlantic.

Husky President and Chief Executive Officer John Lau said the delivery of the hull and turret are on schedule, setting the stage for the completion and installation of topsides facilities, which are more than 50 percent completed, over the next 18 months.

In the absence of any hiccups, White Rose should be pumping crude by late 2005 or early 2006, targeting peak output of 92,000 barrels per day.

Of Newfoundland’s two existing projects, the seven-year-old Hibernia field is now producing more than 200,000 bpd, while Terra Nova averaged 134,000 bpd last year and is now in its third year of operation.

The White Rose owners are Husky at 72.5 percent and Petro-Canada at 27.5 percent.

The project is advancing on other fronts, spudding development wells last October as part of a 130-day drilling program that was 40 days ahead of program in early March.

Will Roach, Husky’s East Coast manager, told the Newfoundland and Labrador Construction Safety Association that each day gained represents a saving of C$450,000 in drilling costs.

Husky also reported last October that after completion of two delineation wells, White Rose reserves had been boosted by 60-90 million barrels of oil from the earlier 200-250 million barrels and by 200-250 billion cubic feet of gas from the previous 1.85 trillion cubic feet, with about one-third of the oil deemed to be recoverable.