Oil operations in Holstein

In spring 2000 RWE Dea began onshore production from the Mittelplate offshore field, Germany‘s most productive oil field. Producing oil safely in the environmentally sensitive Mittelplate field is a technically demanding project.

The sophisticated concept developed for this project has now been implemented. From an onshore site at Friedrichskoog extended reach (ERD) wells have been sunk into the eastern section of the oil field to make commercial exploitation possible – without polluting the sensitive tidal flatland environment of the Wattenmeer National Park. The oil produced is processed at Dieksand Land Station and then piped to Brunsbüttel from where it is transported on to customers.

Onshore and offshore production capacity from the Mittelplate field has now increased to some 2 million mt a year, making Mittelplate by far the most productive oil field in Germany. Before onshore production began, only around 900,000 mt per year was produced in the offshore operation because the crude could only be transported off Mittelplate Drilling and Production Island at high tide.

The Dieksand wells were only made possible by a combination of advanced engineering and maximum precision in planning and implementation. The consortium of RWE Dea and Wintershall has successfully broken new ground in well engineering. Six of these ERD wells have now been sunk into the eastern section of the Mittelplate field. To reach the reservoir at a depth of around 2,000 meters, the wells drilled from onshore Friedrichskoog had to be deviated to the west for more than 8,000 meters. The longest ERD wells ever drilled in Germany naturally confronted geologists and drilling engineers with enormous technical challenges.