Penguins have always been comedy gold for children, from the ninja assassins of Madagascar to the South Pole star Pingu.
Now, however, they’ve been elevated to grown-up superhero status, singlehandedly responsible for helping to boost the oil and gas industry in Scotland.
Yes, the Penguins field in the North Sea, which currently processes raw resources from four drilling centres linked to the Brent Charlie platform, is to be redeveloped.
The major announcement by Shell will see the construction of its first new manned installation in the northern sector of the North Sea in almost 30 years.
The company says between 300 and 400 jobs will be needed to support construction of the floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, mostly based in Scotland.
Once operational, the FPSO is also expected to support about 70 jobs.
The Penguins field is located in 165 metres of water, approximately 150 miles north east of Shetland. Discovered in 1974, it was originally developed in 2002 as a joint venture between Shell and ExxonMobil.
Eight wells will be drilled as part of the redevelopment with oil to be transported via tanker to refineries.
Natural gas will be transported through the tie-in of existing subsea facilities and additional pipeline infrastructure to the St Fergus terminal.
For investors, the redevelopment is certainly an attractive opportunity – Shell is already stating a competitive go-forward break-even price below $40 per barrel.
The FPSO is expected to have a peak production of around 45,000 barrels of oil per day.
“Penguins demonstrates the importance of Shell’s North Sea assets to the company’s upstream portfolio,” says Andy Brown, Upstream Director.
“It is another example of how we are unlocking development opportunities, with lower costs, in support of Shell’s transformation into a world-class investment case.”
The project to revamp the Penguins area is another welcome sign of stabilisation in the oil and gas industry.
Many companies continue to focus on finding new efficiencies in production costs and this is leading to increases in prices – most recently more than $70 a barrel was achieved in some areas.
If you’re keen to become involved in the rebirth of the industry, why not check out the latest vacancies in Oil & Gas with s1jobs?
It could mean the reboot of your own career . . . or as Pingu likes to say: “Noot noot!”