Dunbar/Ellon/Grant

The Dunbar platform sits in 145m of water and is 167m high. It is located 22km south of the Alwyn North platform and 420km north-east of Aberdeen.

Ellon and Grant are smaller fields located approx 9km from Dunbar. They are subsea developments, known as satellite fields which are linked to Dunbar via flowlines and control umbilicals. The flowlines are six-inch pipelines. They are used to transport the production from each well to Dunbar.


Export

Production from Dunbar, Ellon and Grant is transported to Alwyn North. From there, oil is transported to the Sullom Voe Oil Terminal in Shetland via Cormorant Alpha and the Brent pipeline system. Gas is transported via the Frigg pipeline system to our St Fergus Gas Terminal at Peterhead.


An industry innovation

Innovation made the development of the Dunbar, Ellon and Grant fields possible. Dunbar was designed to come onstream as production from Alwyn North fell off plateau. It was designed with the commercial aim of gaining maximum advantage from our existing infra structure in the Northern North Sea.


Additional safety features

Dunbar has two 45-man free-fall lifeboats which are located in the protected environment of the safe refuge area. The control room is also located here.


A technological leader

In the first development phase, production flowed naturally from Dunbar through the 16" pipeline to the Alwyn processing facilities. Now as the field pressure has decreased, boosting is done via two multi-phase pumps. These multi-phase pumps are housed in a 650-tonne module and were installed at a cost of £54.5 million. They are the biggest pumps of their kind in the world. Each pump can process around 40,000 barrels of liquid and between 1.5 and 3.5 million standard cubic metres of gas per day. By installing the pumps, operations in the Alwyn Area will be extended for several years beyond the initial estimated forecast.