Marine Production Center ready to go to sea

The platform's reconstruction project has a history dating back to 2015. In October 2017, it was towed to Gdańsk Shiprepair Yard, where shipbuilding was just completed.

"In front of us, "the hour of truth" – placing the unit on the B8 deposit, work at sea, riots, launching the systems installed on the platform and efficient completion of the B8 deposit", said Grzegorz Strzelczyk, President of the Lotos Petrobaltic board.

The conversion of the drilling platform to the Marine Production Center is a large and complex project. The key for the whole project was the roll-out and assembly operation on board the platform of four powerful modules weighing several hundred tons each – the oil separation system, the gas compression and export system, the water injection system and the energy system, the heart of which is the turbogenerator using the separated gas as fuel for powering the platform.

Another element was the installation of a support for residential module and gas burners, i.e. flares.

The port canal, using barges, was then transported with great precision a residential module with a landing ground for helicopters weighing approximately 550 tonnes. An equally complicated operation was to put the module on the platform.

After less than two years of intensive work on mechanical completeness carried out by the company together with the yard and testing and preparing for the start-up of ship-wide and production systems, the unit is prepared to leave Gdańsk Shiprepair Yard.

Thanks to the verification of the project, as well as the stable and consistent implementation of individual tasks, the Maritime Production Centre has become a modern, ecological and efficient platform. Up to 500 people worked on the project at the same time.

The B8 project concerns the development of oil deposits in the Baltic Sea and is implemented by Lotos B8 Sp. z o.o. Baltic S.K.A. special purpose company. The company carries out oil and natural gas extraction using the Lotos Petrobaltic platform.

The average mining volume in the second quarter of 2019 was 3087 boe/d.

The only shareholder of the B8 deposit is the Lotos Group. The reserves of 2P on this deposit are estimated at 35.3 million boe (including 91% oil and 9% natural gas).

The full production is expected to start in the second quarter of 2021.

Signature of the ER