Alba

The Alba Field

The Alba field lies about 130 miles (210 km) north-east of Aberdeen, Scotland, in the UK Central North Sea, in water depths of approximately 453 feet (138 m).

Discovered in 1984 in Block 16/26, Alba is a heavy oil field and was one of the first shallow Eocene reservoirs to be successfully developed in the North Sea. First oil was achieved in January 1994.

Sustaining Production and Increasing Recovery

The field facilities include a fixed steel platform, the Alba Northern Platform, and a Floating Storage Unit (FSU), the first to be purpose-built for the UK sector of the North Sea. The field was further developed in 2001 through the addition of the Alba Extreme South subsea production centre.

Alba crude oil is offloaded from the stern of the FSU to a shuttle tanker approximately every second month before being transported to refineries in northwest Europe. Alba gas is used for fuel and the platform is also connected by a gas line to the Britannia platform in which Ithaca Energy (UK) Limited holds a 32.38 percent non-operated working interest, via a 2.5 mile (4 km) pipeline linking the two facilities.

In 2021 Alba produced a net daily average of 6,940 barrels of liquids. Since first production in 1994, it has produced over 438 million barrels of oil.

We continue to implement projects designed to sustain production and increase recovery at Alba. A 4-D seismic survey over the field was used to plan further development drilling, which is expected to continue beyond 2022.

Alba is operated by Ithaca Oil and Gas Limited (36.7 percent) with Waldorf Production (25.68%), NEO Energy (17%), Spirit Energy (12.65%) and EnQuest (8%) holding non-operated working interests in the field.