Clair is located 75 km west of the Shetland Islands in 150 m of water and extends over an area of 220 km²

Clair Ridge is the second phase of development of the Clair field which, with an estimated eight billion barrels of oil in place, is the largest undeveloped hydrocarbon resource on the UKCS. Clair was discovered in 1977, but challenging reservoir characteristics and the technological limits of the time meant it was the mid-1990s before the field saw extensive drilling and 2001 before BP and partners approved a development plan.

Targeting the 300 million barrels of recoverable reserves believed to be held in the Phase I area, BP and partners brought the field onstream in 2005 with the first fixed offshore facility to be installed in the west of Shetland area. Horizontal drilling and high-quality seismic imaging have both played an important role in BP’s ability to tap the reservoir’s complex geology. Clair Phase 1 had produced more than 100 million barrels by October 2014.

To the north is Clair Ridge, where BP is targeting 640m barrels of recoverable resources. The £4.5bn investment involves two new bridge-linked platforms, installed in the summer of 2013 and designed to continue producing until 2050 at a peak rate of more than 100,000 barrels of oil per day. Clair Ridge will see the world’s first deployment of BP’s enhanced oil recovery technology LoSal®, a water injection method that is expected to deliver an additional 40 million barrels of oil.

In 2013, the joint venture partners also commenced a £300m two-year appraisal drilling programme, one of the biggest BP has ever undertaken in the North Sea, to help define a possible third phase of development in the Greater Clair area.

Time-lapse video: In under 30 seconds see how we moved thousands of tonnes of equipment on our Clair Ridge platform, offshore UK.

Source: www.bp.com

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