United Kingdom Self-sufficient gas production
Off the British coast, Wintershall Dea has been producing natural gas since 2011 – efficiently and with state-of-the-art technology.
98% of the oil and gas production in the UK comes from offshore fields.
Wintershall Noordzee operates three licences off the British coast. Wingate is the company's first self-operated natural gas production platform in the British North Sea: Gas is being produced successfully from Wingate, a field discovered in 2008, using an unmanned platform that is constantly being monitored and controlled from the Wintershall Noordzee office in Den Helder in the Netherlands.
Where we operate in the United Kingdom
Wintershall Noordzee exclusively operates offshore in the UK. The Wingate natural gas field belongs to licence block 44/24b and is located off the British coast, east of Scarborough. The Sillimanite gas field is situated directly to the north of Wingate and straddles the maritime border of the Netherlands and the UK. The company successfully started production from two wells from Sillimanite in February and June 2020. First gas from the Sillimanite South field was produced in January 2021.
10.5
kilometres is the Wingate Platform away from the British-Dutch median line.
70
metres is the total length from top to bottom of the platform, thereof 45 m under water.
850
tonnes is the weight of the jacket with which the platform is anchored to the seabed.
A view of the RCO centre in Den Helder, Netherlands.
Wingate – a self-sufficient platform
The Wingate field is operated by Wintershall Noordzee and came on stream in 2011. To enable that, a 1,200 square metre production platform was anchored to the seabed. The unmanned platform is fully self-sufficient: A mini turbine power station generates electricity using the natural gas extracted directly from the field. Production is controlled using the company's own Remote Controlled Operations (RCO) telemonitoring system from Den Helder in the Netherlands. The gas produced is transported by pipeline to the nearby D15-A platform and from there to the Dutch mainland.
