Activists board Shell FPSO on route to North Sea

Environmental group Greenpeace said it has boarded a ship carrying the new floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel for Shell's Penguins oil and gas field in the UK North Sea.

Four Greenpeace activists boarded the White Marlin just north of the Canary Islands, on its way to the North Sea, and are carrying enough supplies to occupy the FPSO "for days", the group said.

The Penguins field was originally developed in 2002 as a tie-back to the Brent Charlie platform. When the firm began decommissioning the Brent field in 2017, it came up with a plan to redevelop Penguins with its own FPSO and took a final investment decision on the project in 2018.

Shell said in October last year that the Penguins redevelopment was progressing well, but it declined to give a timing for the sail-away date for the FPSO. Penguins was initially pencilled in to start up last year, with peak production expected at around 45,000 b/d of oil equivalent once the field is fully back on stream.

As part of the redevelopment project, eight wells will be tied back to the FPSO, with crude then transported via tanker to refineries. Gas from Penguins will be transported via the Flags pipeline to the St Fergus gas terminal in northeast Scotland.

"Shell and the wider fossil fuel industry are bringing the climate crisis into our homes, our families, our landscapes and oceans," Greenpeace southeast Asia executive director Yeb Sano said. "They must take accountability for decades of profiting from climate injustice, and pay for the loss and damage they've caused," adding that a just energy transition is needed.

By Caroline Varin