Phillips Mulls Disposals

Phillips Petroleum officials said last week that the company favors a $1.14 billion plan to dispose of 15 oil and gas installations at the Ekofisk field in the Norwegian North Sea. Phillips and its partners have built new installations on the Ekofisk field to replace the 15 disused platforms and other constructions covered by the plan. The field produced about 340,000 barrels of oil per day in September. Phillips said the disposal plan - among the world's biggest - was presented to Norway's Oil and Energy Ministry on Oct. 22. Under the plan, all 14 steel platforms would be removed to land for recycling. The Ekofisk Tank, a processing installation surrounded by a concrete wall, would stay on site as well as 235 km of buried pipelines and drill cuttings. Norway's parliament is expected to rule on the plan in the second half of 2001. The Norwegian state would pay about two-thirds of the cost, with the rest paid by license partners. Phillips officials said the recommendations under the plan were likely to be carried out from 2003 to 2018. They said other possible alternatives it had studied varied in price from $640 million to 1.8 billion.