TotalFinaElf announces that the first of the Nuggets fields has come onstream, 20 months after project sanction. Nuggets is a group of four gas-bearing accumulations, 100% owned by TotalFinaElf, located in the northern North Sea, some 400km northeast of Aberdeen on the UK Continental Shelf. First production from Nuggets N1 will shortly be followed by Nuggets N2, then N3.

The Nuggets N1, N2 and N3 accumulations have been developed as a cluster of four sub-sea wells through a 54-km tie-back to the Alwyn North installations, with controls being provided via the Dunbar platform.

Altogether, the three Nuggets accumulations will produce 165 million standard cubic feet of gas per day (29,500 barrels of oil equivalent per day), thereby optimising the use of Alwyn’s processing capacity. Gas produced at Nuggets will co-mingle with gas from the Alwyn Area for export through the Frigg Transportation System to the St. Fergus terminal in Scotland. A further development of the Nuggets N4 accumulation is expected to be tied-back at a later stage.

The combined Nuggets N1, N2 and N3 development costs amount to a total of £128 million, constituting the largest Alwyn Area development since the sanction of the Dunbar field in 1993.