The Rhyl Field, Block 113/27b, UK East Irish Sea

Abstract

AbstractThe Rhyl Field is located in the offshore East Irish Sea Basin, approximately 30 km to the west of Barrow-in-Furness. Rhyl is one of the producing gas fields forming the Morecambe Hub development, operated by Spirit Energy. The Rhyl reservoir is the Ormskirk Sandstone Formation of Triassic age which regionally comprises four depositional facies types: aeolian, fluvial, sandflat and playa. The depositional system provides excellent reservoir properties that are impacted by a diagenetic history of authigenic illitization and quartz overgrowths. The northern boundary of the field is located underneath the Fleetwood Dyke Complex, resulting in significant imaging and depth-conversion uncertainty. This has been addressed by dyke mapping and manual depth corrections to seismic processing. The trapping mechanism at the southern boundary of the field is also unclear; the dip-closed structural spill point as mapped at the southern boundary appears shallower than the log-derived gas–water contact. Rhyl gas contains a significant inert content: 37% CO2 and 7% N2. The field's production rate has been limited to approximately 40 MMscfgd by the CO2 processing limit of the onshore gas terminal. Material balance studies have yielded a satisfactory understanding of connected gas in place, recoverable reserves and dynamic field behaviour.