Deep Panuke Offshore Gas Development Project

Status: Decommissioned and Abandoned

The Deep Panuke Project has been permanently decommissioned and abandoned.

History

The Deep Panuke Offshore Gas Development Project is operated by Ovintiv Canada ULC (formerly Encana). Production began in August 2013, and was permanently shut-in in May 2018. The Deep Panuke Offshore Gas Development Project operated on a seasonal basis from 2015-2018, with production only during the colder winter months, when natural gas prices were higher. The Deep Panuke Offshore Gas Development Plan estimated the most likely volume of natural gas that would be produced, over the expected production life of 13 years, to be 17.8 billion cubic meters or 632 billion cubic feet.

The Field

The Deep Panuke Offshore Gas Development Project gas field is located on the Scotian Shelf, approximately 250 kilometres southeast of Halifax. Natural gas was produced from the Abenaki Formation carbonate reservoir by four production wells.

Operations

The gas produced and processed offshore was transported via subsea pipeline to shore, and ultimately, to markets in Canada and the United States. The Deep Panuke Offshore Gas Development Project utilized a jack-up type offshore production platform, called the Production Field Centre, which was tied back to the four subsea production wells by subsea flow lines. The Production Field Centre was designed for a peak gas rate of 8.5 million cubic metres per day, or 300 million standard cubic feet per day.

The raw gas produced at The Deep Panuke Offshore Gas Development Project contained approximately 0.18% hydrogen sulphide; therefore, gas sweetening equipment was installed on the Production Field Centre. An amine unit was used to remove hydrogen sulphide along with carbon dioxide, both of which are considered acid gas. After removal, the acid gas was injected into a purpose drilled disposal well.

The total volume of gas produced from each of the four Deep Panuke production wells appears in the table below.

Decommissioning and Abandonment

Production from the four Deep Panuke Offshore Gas Development production wells was permanently shut-in in May 2018. The plug and abandonment program involved the use of a jack-up drilling rig, the Noble Regina Allen (NRA), to set a series of cement and mechanical plugs within the wellbore to permanently seal the wells in accordance with the regulations. This was to prevent hydrocarbons from migrating within or out of the well.

The NRA departed Halifax Harbour in February 2020, to transit offshore to begin decommissioning and abandonment activities. The Production Field Centre was removed with the Kvaerner Canada Ltd. Boabarge 34 in July 2020. The plugging and abandonment of the five project wells (four production wells and one injection well) was completed in August 2020. Ovintiv used the DOF Skandi Neptune to remove subsea assets (e.g. well head protection structures). This work was completed and the project was fully decommissioned and abandoned by October 2020. 

A post-abandonment monitoring program was completed in the summer of 2021 to re-confirm the integrity of the well plugging and abandonment program, and to confirm that there is nothing on the seabed that could pose a potential hazard to other commercial ocean users.  The CNSOPB was satisfied that the post-abandonment monitoring requirements were met and concluded future monitoring was not required.  The Operations Authorization for Deep Panuke was revoked and the project officially closed.