Alligin forms part of the Greater Schiehallion Area and has been developed as a two-well subsea tieback into the existing Schiehallion and Loyal subsea infrastructure and the Glen Lyon floating, production, storage, offload (FPSO) vessel.

It is a 20 million boe field, which was originally forecast to produce 12 000 boe/d at peak.

The project’s performance has been better than expected, however, reaching 15 000 boe/d at peak since start-up in late December.‎

The development has included new subsea infrastructure, consisting of gas lift and water ‎injection pipeline systems, and a new controls umbilical.‎

BP North Sea regional president Ariel Flores said: “Achieving first oil from the Alligin field ‎safely, under budget and ahead of schedule is testament to the performance of the project ‎team and their agile approach to planning and execution.

‎“Alligin is part of BP’s advantaged oil strategy, a development with a shorter project cycle time ‎with oil that is economic to produce and low risk to bring to market. Subsea tiebacks like this ‎complement our major start-ups and help underpin our growing portfolio west of Shetland.‎”

Alligin (BP 50% operator; Shell 50%) is part of a series of infrastructure-led subsea tieback ‎developments in the North Sea, accessing new production from fields located near to ‎established producing infrastructure.‎